Titans: Tomorrow
by Chaltab
Summary: A new generation of young heroes has appeared, including a new Robin. When she and her Batman have a disagreement, Carrie Kelly sets out on her own to Jump City... where she learns that flying solo isn't all it's cracked up to be.
1. Prologue: All It Takes is a Moment

Author's Note: This is a Titans story. The heroes are, to a degree, paterened after the originals, though they are their own characters. That said, story takes place in approximately the same timeline of Batman Beyond, and assumes that everything from 'Go!' to 'Trouble in Tokyo' happens within the framework of the DCAU. This story beings several years after the finale of Batman Beyond, but several years before Terry discovers that he is a clone/son of Bruce Wayne. In the mean time, he has his own Robin, who is my main character for this chapter and the leader of the team. That's where this story starts. There may be apperances by the old Teen Titans later on, but for now it's the new guard, a mixture of original and DC characters. That aside, I hope you enjoy.

* * *

**Titans Tomorrow**

**Chapter One: All It Takes Is A Second**

_My name is Carrie Kelley. Perhaps it's a name you've heard before, perhaps it is not. Most people haven't, and some people who have heard forgot it, due to their own apathy, or thanks to Raven. More on that later._

_You see, Carrie is just the name I was born with. Most people know me as Robin. When I was fourteen, my father was murdered and I went to the only man I thought could help me: Terry McGuiness. Batman. I was a rookie then, I admit it. I would be more likely to help get him killed than catch the bad guy. But that was over four years ago, and I've learned a lot since then._

_Now I'm a Teen Titan. I have my own team. I **lead** it. Not even Terry can say that. Bruce Wayne couldn't either. The only people in our so-called Bat-Family who can say that are Dick Grayson and Tim Drake._

_Dick Grayson, the first Robin, later called Nightwing, led the original Titans out of New York City. Tim Drake later led a new group out of the California town called Jump City._

_They are the ones I hope to emulate. They persevered despite the odds, and came out on top. Bruce is hopeless and Terry is still working on it. And don't get me started on that poor wretch Barbara Gordon. Then again, she's the only one of us who is actually married, so maybe she did the right thing._

_I'm probably confusing you a lot, huh? Maybe I should back up a bit and talk about how all this got started. Like all stories of Titans coming together, it begins with Batman and Robin having a disagreement. In hindsight, both times it happened, they had points the other should have listened to, and this story is no different. But the choices I made that day in November of 2049, I don't regret. _

_My name is Carrie Kelley. I'm Robin. And this is my story._

* * *

It wasn't uncommon anymore, ever since Intergang had moved back into Gotham. An illegal cache of high-powered weapons delivered to a seemingly-abandoned warehouse near the docks. It was just like the good ole days. Except now the bad guys had fusion rifles instead of Tommy Guns.

"Terry," whispered the red-haired teen girl in the Robin suit. "I know this is the place..."

Batman scowled at her. "Robin, on the job, call me Batman. Please."

"Right, sorry." The girl visibly winced. "Look, Batman, I know what I saw. Before the tracer scrambler kicked back in, the ISP number the original communication came from was definitely long-distance. But not out of the country."

Batman shook his head. There is no reason for Intergang to be receiving shipments from within the United States in a port city like Gotham. We have to figure out where these weapons are going. I've tracked them _from _somewhere in Kaznia."

"That was a decoy transmission, Batman. I'm telling you--"

Robin was suddenly cut off by a silencing hand from Batman. He'd heard something... and she heard it too--a guard was coming down the hall. Heavy armor by the sound of his steps.

"I'll handle this one," Batman said. As the guard came into view, Terry McGinnis hurled an electrified Batarang through the air that slammed into the guard's shoulder pad and sent a charge of electricity pulsing through the armor. The guard collapsed in a heap.

Batman and Robin hesitated to make sure there were no guards within earshot of the attack, and then dropped into the hallway. As Batman slinked into the shadows, Carrie pulled the soldier out of the hallway... And then realized something...

"Batman, look... This guy isn't a soldier in armor; it's a guard-bot."

Batman switched on his scan visor within his suit and saw that Robin was correct.

"These guys must be backed by a lot of money if they can afford one of these," Robin observed.

"It's Intergang," Terry reminded her.

"...Right..."

The duo continued down the hall, hiding in the shadows and using their active camo when they needed to. Finally they made it to a large room full of men with fusion rifles, packing a bunch of _other_ fusion rifles into crates for shipment.

"Amazing how much technology has progressed and yet how little some things change," Bruce Wayne said over the communicator into Terry and Carrie's headsets.

"You're still alive," Terry shot back with his trademark acid wit.

"Sorry," Wayne replied. "Ace thought he smelled something outside. I had to calm him down."

"Right."

"Guys, knock it off," Carrie whispered. "One of those thugs is coming this way. I think he's realized one of his bots is offline."

Indeed, one of the men with fusion rifles was heading towards Batman and Robin. The duo broke left and right, climbing above the thug, even as a second one joined him.

"I'll take the one on the left if you get the one on the right," Terry commented to Robin. He'd already killed the com so that Wayne couldn't say anything.

"Agreed, right, right," Carrie said. "I go left, you go right, gotcha... But I'm serious, Batman. These aren't coming from Kaznia. They get blamed for everything already anyway. I'd be willing to bet they're going to Kaznia. Or Markovia..."

"Just go!" Batman shouted, and suddenly, both heroes were in action. Unfortunately, the earlier miscommunication had them both going for the left thug.

And so, Batman and Robin collided in the air, a painful bone-crunching sound alerting all the men in the building to their presence. "Nice job!" Robin and Batman shouted at each other in unison. Both of them immediately leapt to their feet, dodging away as a stream of powerful energy blasts lanced out at them.

Robin dived behind a forklift which quickly proved to be spotty cover at best, while Batman dived behind one of the hover-conveyors that was sending the weapons from the ships--no, not ships, trucks--to the men who were loading them into crates.

Robin shot straight up with her jet-boots and hurled a duo of birdarangs at the men who were firing at her, slicing off the barrels of their guns and making their aim go wild. Batman took advantage and used his own jet-boots to blast across the room and slam into the thugs, knocking them down. Two precision Batarangs lanced out and slammed into a weapons crate, causing it to explode.

As several of the criminals scattered, Batman and Robin through themselves towards the fight, but the explosion also allowed many of them to retreat... The two vigilantes did the best they could rounding up the thugs foolish enough to attack them, but punches and kicks were no substitute for super powers.

The sound of an engine revving and then converting to hover-mode as it took off into Gotham's skyline drew a curse from Terry. "Robin." He said as they watched the speck fly off into the distance. "You need some time off, and that's not a suggestion."

"What?" Carrie blurted. "Batman, this isn't funny! If you hadn't told me to hit the left one--"

Batman stopped her. "I told you to hit the _right _one. If you hadn't had your mind so preoccupied on getting out to California to stop these mythical land-shipments of weapons then you wouldn't have misheard me!"

The young woman turned and glanced over her shoulder at the man she called her mentor. "I'm right about this. They were using trucks--not ships--trucks! Those things can't make the trek across the ocean without refueling."

"You..." Terry blinked... Could she have been right? But who would be shipping weapons in from California? That state had the tightest gun-control laws in the nation.

"I what?" replied Carrie.

"You're dismissed," he said. "You've been out on the town every night for two straight weeks. You're going to burn yourself out."

"But..."

"You're eighteen and smarter than I was when I was twenty," Terry said. "You'll do fine, Robin. Just stay out of trouble while you're on your vacation."

Carrie looked down. "Right," she said bitterly. "Thanks a lot, Terry.**  
**

* * *

Seventy-two hours later, Carrie Kelley stood atop the towering monolith that was Jump City's Wayne/Powers building. Her cape flowed in the coastal wind, as she looked out over the darkened city. 

"This feels strangely like home," she said to herself. "I wonder if this is how Robin felt when he started the Titans here."

Robin's eyes scanned down towards the coast, and out towards the island where Titans Tower had once stood. There was now an abandoned STAR Labs building on the island, shut down after the stock market crash of '23.

Still, Carrie new this wasn't a pleasure trip. Batman may have wanted it to be a vacation for her, but she had work to do. Someone was sending high-powered weapons across the country, and she had to find out who was doing it.

Taking a step towards the edge of the roof, Carrie leapt off and activated the memory fabric in her cape, and her jet boots at the same time. And maybe, somewhere out there... She'd find her own team of Teen Titans.

After all, they say history repeats itself.


	2. Darkest Before Dusk

Disclaimer: I do not own Carrie Kelley, Robin, Jump City, or the Teen TItans. I do own Phaeism however. Feel free to use him but please don't pretend you created him. Asking first would be nice.

* * *

** Titans Tomorrow  
Chapter Two: Darkest Before Dusk**

Carrie's first two days in Jump City involved getting settled in at her new apartment, a flat in the northern end of town with barely adequate heating and plumbing. Wayne hadn't cut her off, but he'd turned the spigot on her finances way down when she had announced she was staying in California. If worse came to worse, she could always get a job.

Terry was actually more upset about it than Bruce. He kept calling the apartment over and over trying everything from pleading to demanding that Carrie came back. Not because she was that vital to his war on crime, of course. After all, he was the freaking Batman.

And as such, he could never live with himself if his Robin got hurt, out on her own for the first time.

His _Robin_, Carrie thought to herself. _As if I'm some sort of property._

No more. From now on, she was on equal terms with her allies, or flying solo. No middle ground. Carrie carried in her box of casual clothing and set it down on her bed. It was nearly five-thirty in the afternoon, and this late in the year it was dusk at that time.

She'd suit up and go Robin-ing as soon as she showered. The weapons were coming from somewhere in the old stomping ground of the Teen Titans. She'd find the source and make Terry proud of her. That was her promise to herself.

* * *

_My birth name is Alexander Lambert; those that fear me know me as Phaeism. I used to be dead. Strange admission, huh? But I really think it's true. I remember a young woman with a top hat and an ankh, telling me I was given a second chance… _

_It was because of the circumstances of my death, if I remember correctly. The Spectre killed me. That much I'm certain of. There was something else to it, but I don't really know. The details are vague. Like dreams that vanish when you wake up—you remember having it… But the details are gone. _

_My life story is not a pleasant tale, and I won't bore you with the details at this time. Suffice it to say I've been given a gift, and I can use this talent here in the modern era to make up for whatever crimes put me in the crosshairs of the Spirit of Vengeance in my old life. _

_My name is Alex Lambert. I'm Phaeism. And this is my story._

* * *

The young man who named himself after the dusk itself, Phaeism, stood atop the Alva Industries Ltd. Skyscraper, one of the many beacons on Jump City's super-skyline. Jump was a very different town than it had been in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. What had once been a large city of 1,700,000 now rivaled Los Angeles as California's chief city with a population of over seven million. The buildings rose high into the air leaving a dank and dreary Undercity down below, where only the wretched and the robotic called home. The worst of that place was the Light Brigade, a band of glow-skin racists who hoped to take over the world some day. Silly as that sounded.

Most street crime took place on the Midlevels, the places where the common man did commerce. That was where those who preferred the luxury of road-vehicles over the speed of air-cars coasted about their lives, satisfied.

Criminals loved to prey on that type. That was the problem with Californians these days, Alex had always been told. They were too satisfied with themselves. That lead to arrogance, which could only lead to trouble.

Nevertheless, self-satisfaction wasn't a crime; murder and robbery were. That was what Phaeism would stop. As soon as he heard the sirens so many hundreds of feet below, Alex pulled his green jacket closed and zipped it, then brushed his red-brown hair from his face.

And then, he jumped, falling through the levels of the city with mad abandoned, and enjoying the rush of wind in his face. He had plenty of time…

Plenty of time that passed all too quickly. The rush ended and Phaeism saw the road coming up fast. The trunk of the car the criminals were driving opened up and an invisible force-wave blasted out and caused the police car chasing them to careen off the overpass. This wouldn't have normally be a problem since the cop-car could fly. Unfortunately, it slammed into the side of an older building and got lodged inside the structure, the back end jutting out like a dart from a dart board.

Alex gritted his teeth, hoping none of the officers had been killed in the crash. Then, he was there, right in front of the cop car on the road…

And then the teen exploded. Not into the messy pile of gore one would expect from a human body falling from such heights, nor a ball of fire as though he were a bomb. Phaeism exploded into a strange green mist, the same color as his jacket and britches, and the car full of fleeing criminals ploughed through that mist…

But the mist was more than just the remnants of the young man—it was the young man. That was his talent, his superpower. And the gas began to follow the car, like a grim spectre.

"Hey, Bruno, what the golf club do you think that is?" one of the thugs, Clyde, asked, thumbing out the window…

Bruno swore, reaching for the trigger to the force cannon on the back of the vehicle while simultaneously telling the driver, Tony, to speed up. Tony complied and Bruno slammed his clenched fist onto the button. "It's that ghost kid, I know it!" muttered Bruno.

The force-cannon charged and fired, but the hovering cloud of fog seemed to anticipate it, spreading wide enough, making a hole in itself that the wave passed through harmlessly. The cloud took the shape of a demon's shadow, like a giant green gargoyle pursuing the car through the darkened streets.

It acted quickly, gas sliding in behind the force cannon and quickly solidifying into a sharp blade that sliced the cannon clean off before turning back into gas, all in one motion so fluid it was as every atom of the mist was controlled by a single consciousness.

The force cannon tumbled along the road and broke through the guardrail, plummeting into the Undercity below.

Phaeism, still totally in control of his constitution, ignored the retaliatory spray of bullets from Bruno and Clyde's machine guns as both gangsters leaned out the window. Tony drove faster, but the substance of the gas seemed to speed up in turn, as if it were attached to the car itself. Wisps of the fog slid into the windows and solidified, jerking Bruno and Clyde out of the car and sending them both skidding along the asphalt of the over-pass. More blades formed and cut through the tires, while simultaneously, others grabbed the axels and still more dug into the road.

The car skidded to a halt, and Tony's head slammed against the steering wheel and fell unconscious as his car slid, uncontrollably, into the guardrail. The stone broke from the impact, but Phaeism's tether kept it from sliding off into the dark abyss below.

The green fog coalesced in one spot on the road, dragging the unconscious Tony and throwing him with Clyde and Bruno as the gas reformed into a human shape. Alexander walked forward, his face calm, but his eyes betraying a well of disgust and anger below the surface.

Bruno and Clyde, their legs and buttocks covered in abrasions from being dropped onto the road, staggered to wobbly feet and aimed their damaged guns at the approaching teen.

"Stay back you meta-freak!" Bruno shouted. "We'll pump you full of lead."

Phaeism shook his head. "If your weapons frightened me I would not be standing here unguarded," he said. He took a step forward, and Bruno and Clyde opened fire. Phaeism continued moving, now running towards them. The broken barrels of their guns made their aim erratic and inaccurate, and the bullets that actually hit Phaeism tore through him, but caused no harm. The holes sealed back up as though he was made of gas even in his human form.

"Nice try," he said. Phaeism's fist transformed into mist and reformed as a green mallet. "Now go to sleep."

Two THWACKS and fifteen minutes later, the cops arrived to find the car in the middle of the street and the three unconscious criminals lying face first on the overpass, their hands and feet bound in the scraps of their own shirts.

Public service at its best**  
**

* * *

Robin once again waved the unloaded fusion rifle in the face of the thug in front of her. His name was apparently Spikey Joey. She could see why. He was a surprisingly tall Latino man with spikes literally protruding from his otherwise bald head in the shape of a Mohawk, the result of surgical implants. He'd tried to head-butt her with the spikes earlier; one poke was all it took before Carrie had taught him the error of his ways.

"Tell me," she said with measured threat in her voice, "have you seen these weapons before?"

"I told you, I don't know nothing 'bout no weapons!" Joey repeated.

"Funny. The truck that delivered this gun to the cache I found it in had your license plate. And a guy that looked an awful lot like you was driving it."

"Go spiff yourself, wench!" the criminal spat. "My truck got stolen three days ago, an' I ain't never seen no weapons. _Comprende, gringo_?"

With an unnerving smirk, Robin smacked Joey across the face with the butt of the gun and then twisted around into a joint lock that, if pulled to its full extent, would have taken the man's arm out of his socket. Of course she didn't plan to do that, but the threat was a powerful persuasion technique.

"AAAAHHHH!" Joey screamed. "_Madre de Dios_!"

"You ready to change your tune?" Robin asked. "Or do we have to take this further?"

"Listen," he repeated. "I did drugs back in the day, sold a few slappers. I been clean for three months, you hear me? I'm clean! My truck got stolen and I ain't seen nothing since. Now let go of me or I'm gonna sue your gringo AAHHHUHH!"

Carrie had pressed the lock farther, but was herself beginning to wonder if she was in the right place. She had certainly seen him in the truck, but he had moved differently, and hadn't said much. It was possible he could have had his mind controlled—it had happened to Bruce Wayne back in the day, and it wasn't too far fetched to think maybe so many years later the technology wasn't more common…

Robin let go of Joey's arm and clamped the gun onto her belt. "Fine. But for the record," she said, holding out a palm-full of slappers—the aforementioned drug-deployment patches much like nicotine patches. "I found these in your bed room before you walked in on me. They tested positive for Psycho Pirate. Care to explain to me again about being clean for three months?"

"Ha!" laughed Spikey Joey. "Psycho Pirate's been legal in California since '39. You really are an East Coaster. Now get out of my house or I'm calling the cops!"

Carrie glanced down at the slappers in her hand. _This junk is legal here?_

"Don't bother. I'm gone."

Robin turned and made her way towards the window, getting a grapple gun ready since her jet-boots were low on fuel… When suddenly, a noise to her right startled her… Robin jerked in that direction, grabbing a birdarang.

"You don't know a thing about this city," threatened a low male voice. The young man it came from couldn't have been older than seventeen. He had dark red-brown hair and wore a jacket and a pair of pants, both green. "I heard that guy screaming. What did you do, 'hero'?"

Robin did not lower her birdarang. "I was just asking some questions about a case I'm on."

"Gotham is your town—if you're even the real Robin,' said the young man. "I'm Phaeism, and I protect this city just fine. Head home or you **will** go to jail tonight."

In all honestly, Robin wasn't impressed. He certainly had the intimidating voice down pat, but his presentation was lacking. Green wasn't really a threatening color, and his face was kinder than his words.

"I'm here to find out where these weapons are coming from," Robin repeated. "And I'll be spiffed before I let some pretty boy in a green coat take me in for doing my job." And proving herself to Terry, she added mentally.

Suddenly the kid in front of her dissolved into a green fog and dispersed….

_How can you defend yourself,_ the mist asked, _if you don't have a solid target?_


	3. Jump City Is A Big Fat Idiot

_Special thanks to Frank Miller and the writers of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic for some ideas in this chapter._

**Titans Tomorrow **

**Chapter Three: Jump City Is A Big Fat Idiot**

_The name is Phaeism_, the gas told her. _You're not welcome in Jump City_…

Carrie's eyes narrowed, as she reached up and switched her visor to thermal mode. A glance let her know she was surrounded by the green shape shifter and his strange gaseous form. Energy in the form of heat and bioelectricity surrounded her, and she realized that this guy could kill her if he wanted to… just by floating into her lungs and exploding them. She'd have to find a way to fix this if she was going to stay in Jump City. Maybe Wayne could send her some sort of filter…

Suddenly, some of the green fog coalesced in one spot and that fog lashed out in the form of a baseball bat, slamming into Carrie's stomach and knocking her off the balcony. Her jet boots, still low on energy, fired at her will and she used her gloves to give her cape a shock. The glider shape combined with her jet boots allowed her to trust upwards at nearly a 90-degree angle with the horizon, and she flew out of the cloud of gas before turning around in mid air.

The fog formed the vague shape of a human and flew upwards, resuming the body of the teen. Carrie gritted her teeth and grabbed two birdarangs from her belt. Phaeism came into range and she let them fly; both lanced out and slammed into Phaeism's shoulders, tearing right through them.

To no visible effect. They just slid back together—he was still gaseous even in this form. But it was obvious this was difficult by the strain on his face. Nevertheless, the immunity he had displayed towards the birdarangs shocked Carrie long enough for the gaseous hero to make it to her and shoulder slam her, his attack considerably more solid than his defense

Almost shaking with anger at how this kid had gotten the jump on her, Carrie backflipped and landed on the roof of a nearby apartment. She hadn't expected to fight any metahumans tonight, especially with this particular power, so she'd have to re-strategize. What had her scan told her? He was still hot, and still conscious even as a gas. The bio-electricity meant that his synapses were still firing—he could think. Despite his appallingly bad superhero fashion sense, he was dangerous.

This fact was accented when a cloud of fog descended on the building's rooftop AC unit. The sound of metal being sheered by something sharp preceded the AC unit flying out of the fog straight at Robin. She jumped out of the way and did a handspring to a higher point on the staggered rooftop. "You act like I'm a criminal and here you are destroying public property," she called towards the cloud. She knew enough about California law to know that all climate control units had become government-owned and operated machines after the Near Apocalypse of '09.

She could have sworn she heard the fog actually _growl_ at that.

It turned back into Phaeism. "As if anyone will be using the air-conditioner in November."

"True," Carrie said, cautiously making sure she kept her eye on the teen. "But you still destroyed something that will have to be replaced. I was only extracting information from a known felon."

"Who is currently an innocent man," Phaeism said. Carrie could tell he still wasn't terribly sure of his words, but felt the need to do this, as if some outside force was compelling him to. "Like it or not, Psycho Pirate is a legal drug around here."

Carrie gritted her teeth. Fine, so he wasn't technically committing a crime by having those slappers. But she knew she'd seen Joey and his truck delivering weapons not twenty-four hours ago.

Suddenly, she couldn't think of it any longer, because Phaeism was moving again. After grabbing two sets of force-pads from her belt, Robin strapped them to her hands to use as weapons against the gas. Obviously Phaeism wasn't expecting this, because the look on his face when she blasted him with them was a priceless mask of surprise.

Phaeism was blasted backwards, dispersing as he flew, the wisps becoming a claw that dived towards Robin. The Girl Wonder leapt backwards, but tripped over a cable that ran along the rooftop and fell on her rear, allowing the fog claw to get above her.

Carrie raised her force gauntlets to blast him again, but suddenly found her hands constricted by a powerful string—a pure green one. Phaeism had slipped a pair of fog strings out of her field of vision till they could restrain her, and the claw above her slammed down across her torso, pinning her to the roof.

The teen's face appeared in the cloud. "Ready to call it quits?" he asked.

"Wouldn't be much of a hero if I were, would I?" Carrie quip. She reached out her hands onto the solid portion of the giant claw, but it quickly dispersed around her hand… And suddenly, her scan visor gave her an idea…

She activated the current on her gloves, the one she normally used to activate the memory fabric of her cape..

The effect was instantaneous, even in his gaseous state. Phaeism lit up like a Christmas tree, all his molecules jerking away from the current and slamming back together… Suddenly the cloud of fog had coalesced into a teen again, and Robin immediately went on the offensive using her force gauntlets. The wave slammed out again, but instead of dispersing the young man it hit solid matter and sent him sprawling back.

Robin got up, making sure she did not trip over the cable again, and darted over to Phaeism. He was trying to stand up as Carrie got there, and clobbered him in the face with an escrima stick. The teen recoiled, grasping his noise. Carrie goggled when she saw that his nose was bleeding—and that the blood was actually red.

"Imagine that…" she said.

Phaeism just gave her a wry smile. "Nobody ever said I was omnipotent."

The young man then surprised Robin with a punch to her face that drove her backwards and sent saliva flying from her mouth. That wasn't pleasant, she thought. He punched her again, but she deflected it and jerked him into a shoulder lock similar to the one she had used on Spikey Joey.

"That's a real shway power you have there," she said, "but I can shut it down with a little electricity. So are you ready to call it quits?"

"Not a chance," Phaeism said, lifting Carrie off the ground and throwing her down to the lower part of the roof. A moment's hesitation later, the teen once again burst into the form of a cloud.

It took a moment for Carrie to get her bearings. His smell—some weird musty scent, undoubtedly the effects of transmuting elements. It was mildly intoxicating in the way sniffing markers can be, though not as otherwise unpleasant… Still, the disorientation was enough for her to curse his power once again. She also realized he had to be fairly strong physically if he could pick her up like he did.

Suddenly, Carrie had an idea, and threw an exploding birdarang at the fog. The explosion itself only dispersed Phaeism a bit, but he didn't seem to mind, descending towards her twice as fast as before.

She gave him her sexiest smile, winked, and said, "Catch me if you can." Then Robin turned and ran towards the edge of the building, taking off her jet boots and cape, then diving off down towards the streets below**  
**

* * *

A shadowed figure creeped through the apartment—a very familiar one to our heroes, as it was the home of Spikey Joey. The drug abuser lay on his bed, one minute laughing uncontrollably, the next weeping like a young child, and suddenly furious as a hurricane… Then calm bliss…

The effects of the drug known as Psycho Pirate, of which a whole slapper full was attached to Joey's arm. It was legal in California thanks to the machinations of former governor Joseph Barbossa. That really didn't concern the shadowed figure.

Joey had told the Bat-brat too much, and he had had to be silenced. The shadowed figure stepped into darker shadows, and emerged, his silhouette different than before. He now was thinner, and had spikes on his head… just like Joey's.

And when he stepped into the light, it instantly became clear that he _was_ Joey or at least an identical replica.

The drug addled mind of Spikey Joey could only laugh at the absurdity of seeing himself walk up to… himself… in his own apartment. But it was clear the new Joey had nothing funny to say.

"Good night, scapegoat," the other Joey said with a smile. He raised his hand, which glowed with some sort of ethereal energy, and then plunged it downward.

Joey never knew what hit him**  
**

* * *

Phaeism reformed on the edge, and glanced down. "Woman, you're going to get yourself killed," he muttered, diving off after her. He knew she was just making sure he got in close so she could shock him again, but he had no choice. There were things down in the Undercity that could save her from death by splat only to slowly digest her over the next five years.

So he fell, and fell some more, using his power to accelerate faster than gravity would normally allow, until he caught up with the plummeting Robin. "Listen to me," he shouted. "If you shock me, we're both dead. Understand? I'm not going to land on a roof or anything. I don't have to!"

Robin just smiled at him. "You're only saying that because you care," she said.

"Spiffy little wench," he cursed her, turning into a cloud of fog and surrounding her, even as several tendrils of it formed and grabbed her and began to hover upwards. He made sure that she couldn't grab the tendrils with her shocker gloves as the floated backup towards the buildings… Just as they got almost to the level of the roof they had fought on earlier, though, Carrie reached up into the fog itself and activated her gloves.

Phaeism wanted to shout at her for being so stupid, but could only twitch as the electricity shorted out his own bio-field and forced him to coalesce back together. The two instantly began falling, but suddenly, Robin grabbed something from her waist—from her belt..

A grapple gun! She'd not been in danger at all, and like an idiot he'd fallen right into the trap. But he was too shaken from the jolt yet to do anything, and she wrapped him up tight with her right arm and fired the grapple gun with her left. It made contact on something and the two went sailing back to the roof, landing near the boots and cape. Again, Robin smiled at him. "Fight smart, not tough," she said, keeping her gloves trained on him at all times. "Batman always told me that."

"Which one?" Phaeism asked, still unable to move out of range of the gloves.

"What makes you think there's more than one Batman?" Robin arched an eyebrow, but still smiled smugly at her captive.

Phaeism laughed. "The fact that if it was just one man he'd have to be pushing 100 years old by now, for one."

"Ninety-two," Robin answered honestly. That's how old Bruce would be next February.

"Whatever," Phaeism said. "Now are you going to let me go?"

"Only if you promise to leave me alone," she said.

"Well spiff. I can't make that promise unless you promise to leave," he said.

Robin shook her head, and dropped the playful banter. He was creeping her out by the fact that he was enjoying it. Normally other people in the business didn't like being so openly flirted with by an enemy. Phaeism just flirted back, spiff it. That wasn't fair!

"Not happening until I find out who is sending weapons to Intergang in Gotham." Robin said. "Besides, I kind of like this place. It's shway." Of course that was a lie. Just another attempt at annoying her adversary.

"In that case, no deals. We'll just have to sit her together till one of us passes out from exhaustion." Phaeism returned Robin's earlier wink, much to her chagrin.

Suddenly, a bloodcurdling scream came from nearby, and it was a voice that the two recognized all too well. "Joey!" the two blurted simultaneously.

The feud between the two forgotten in an instant, both Robin and Phaeism turned and dived off the building, Robin forgetting to even pick up her shoes and cape. She used the bat-grapple when she saw which balcony Phaeism was landing on, and pulled herself to it, kicking the door open with the ninja shoes she wore under the boots even as Phaeism tried to flow under the door that Joey had apparently locked.

When they got to the poor bloke's bedroom, there wasn't much left, just a burn mark on his bed along with his shoes and the spike implants that had once protruded from his head.

And there was the smell… How do you describe the smell of someone who has been magically burned alive in his own apartment? Robin had seen some nasty stuff in her four years as Robin—drug murders, suicides, the effects of a fusion rifle on the skull of a human being, even her own father lying in a pool of his own blood, which had started her whole journey… None of it compared to the smell. She ran into Joey's bathroom and hurled in his toilet.

Phaeism looked at her with compassion. "I'd be doing the same," he said, "if I hadn't transmuted my stomach into gas."

"Who could have done something like this?" Robin wondered out loud.

"Whoever framed him for the weapons smuggling you were asking him about," Phaeism said. There was a reserved determination in his voice. "This is my entire fault. If I hadn't been so busy trying to bring you in, this wouldn't have happened."

"If I hadn't been trying to make him talk," Robin said, "it wouldn't have either. Forget the blame—the real culprit is whoever murdered the wretch. We find him and I find out who is running the weapons."

Phaeism looked away, but nodded. "Right. I guess I can be a team player for a while. I need to get back soon though. My caretaker Daniel is going to kill me."

"Yeah, you do that," she said. Then she yawned, and suddenly realized how tired she was. "I guess it's time for me to find my own bat-cave too. Good night…" She trailed off.

"Phaeism," the young man offered as he headed towards the door.

"You're real name. And a way to contact you." Robin demanded.

"The name's Alex," he said. "Meet me at the top of the Space Needle tomorrow night around nine. And can I have the benefit of your name. _Quid pro quo_ and all."

"Carrie," Robin said. "Tomorrow, then?"

"Wouldn't miss it."


	4. The Undercity

Disclaimer: The Undercity inspired by the video game _Starwars: Knights of the Old Republic. _Just so you can't accuse me of intelectual disohonesty.

* * *

**Titans Tomorrow **

**Chapter Four: The Undercity **

The next morning, Carrie awoke around 11:00 AM in the little ramshackle apartment she'd rented. Well, ramshackle by the standards of Gotham at least. At least it had indoor plumbing and sufficient heat.

Her official home in Gotham was still her childhood home, but she had taken an extended leave of absence from it to come to Jump City, and she'd been sleeping off an on at Wayne Manor or at Terry's place for weeks due to the fact she was constantly tired from her Robin-ing. It didn't take much to see that Dana didn't appreciate Terry having a teenage girl sleeping in his house constantly, even if she understood the reasons.

Carrie herself certainly wasn't interested in Terry. Women Dana's age could just be… irrational… about such things.

Carrie ate breakfast and showered, which was totally uneventful except that while washing her hair a small P-shaped device fell off her head. She instantly recognized it as a tracking device, but didn't know why it was shaped like a P. That was, until the internet informed her that the correct spelling of the word Phaeism was in fact, different from the spelling used in the popular Rock'n'Rap band 'Fazem'.

"Sneaky little…" she muttered, throwing the shorted-out tracking device into the trash can.

Her body cleaned and her stomach full, Carrie finally forced herself to commit to the arduous task of finding a day job. She'd heard horror stories—stories of when Power Girl had once tried to find a day job after her powers started wonking out and found that life to be a waking nightmare, and when Argent had tried once to get a job at Microsoft but was constantly turned down because the company was afraid her plasma energy would delete all their hard drives.

Full time heroes finding day-jobs usually ended in disaster, but Wayne wasn't giving her enough money, at least in her mind. She had to find something so she could earn enough money to get a better apartment.

After clipping enough adds to last her a few hours, she stuffed them in her pocket and headed out the door… When she stumbled upon a small brown package in front of the door with her name on it…

She brought it inside and scanned it with the visor in the lenses of her mask to make sure there were no explosives or something, and opened it carefully. Inside, she found a letter with two paragraphs, the first, written in dark magenta with a curious slant to the penmanship, read:

_Friend! _

_It is so very wonderful to see you embarking on a glorious new journey! Everyone needs some help when they first start out. For me it was the removal of my bonds, both emotional and physical. For you, this small gift may be what you need. Please accept it…_

And below it, another message written immaculately in blue-black ink:

_When we learned of what happened between you and McGinnis, Koriand'r and I thought it would be nice to help out. I was once in the exact same place that you are. It's not an easy life, but I'm confident Bruce and Terry chose well. No need to repay us. Just make sure you use it well._

And below that, it was signed in both pens:

_From the old guard to the new: Robin and Starfire _

_We trust you will know who to give them to._

Her mind already blown, Carrie removed the packing paper and pulled a small metal box from the package, and found a thumbprint scanner on it. She unlocked the box with her own print, not at all surprised they'd had the means to find it. Inside the box rested five pristine silver-and-black communicators, each with a stark white 'T' on them.

Carrie looked at them with a strange sense of satisfaction, and smirked. "Everyone always said they could read me like a book.**  
**

* * *

After an indescribably dreadful day of searching for a job throughout Jump City, Carrie took a nap from around 4:00 to 8:30 and then pulled on her Robin suit.

Terry had once observed that the Bat-suit was over twenty years old and still state of the art. The Robin suit was state of the now art. It had many of the same enhancements Terry's costume did, with some extras. For example, the active camouflage field that covered her head as well as the surface of the suit, or the sensor inside that could detect if Carrie was unconscious; this it did to regulate whether the cape detached or not when snared—the theory being that if she was unconscious and falling, a snared cape could be her only hope of living, while if she were conscious and fighting, getting her cape snared mid-fight could be a fatal mistake. Just read about what happened to Dollar Bill in The Watchmen or the E-Mode 'no capes' sequence from that ancient Disney/Pixar film The Incredibles. The black gloves had retractable spines for climbing, just like the original Batman, and the entire red-and black theme in the vein of Tim Drake's first outfit kept her from looking ridiculous.

But her favorite thing was the visor. Only three millimeters thick, the thing looked like a normal domino mask, similar to the one the first Robin wore. But the eye slits allowed her to see through them, while projecting a false picture of a normal eye on the other end, completely with a Trojan horse retina scan that would give anyone who tried to ID her that way the name criminal record of some fifty-year-old thug in Blackgate Prison.

Presently, it was 9:02 and Carrie landed atop the Space Needle platform and walked forward, looking around. Things had definitely changed. What had once been the highest point in Jump City was now surrounded by much-taller skyscrapers that extended towards the heavens. Forty years ago she would have felt on top of the world here; now it felt like the bottom of the Valles Marineris.  
"Amazing, isn't it?" came the voice of Phaeism.

"Huh?" Carrie said, turning to phase the teen. He was… different tonight. He seemed to have gotten whatever chip he had on his shoulder last night removed a forgotten. His face and voice were more pleasant, at least.

Phaeism pointed up. "Just how everything that once was on top can so easily go to the bottom." He looked at her and then got serious. "Spikey Joey was murdered last night after you interrogated him. That means someone doesn't want us asking questions but is afraid to get involved personally. They're trying to warn us and…"

"They're framing people and then killing them off if they come under suspicion," Carrie interrupted. "Which means that they have access to some highly advanced technology."

"Or have someone with the ability to control their minds—or worse, shape shift."

Carrie glanced down at the Undercity below her for a minute. It sure was dark down there… The black void looked like it could reach out and grab her and pull her in, engulf her in its night and ever let go. "We need to stay in contact," she said at length. "We'll share information, keep tabs on each other so we know that it's really us and not whoever is framing people."

"Yeah, about that," he said… "My caretaker kind of likes his privacy and stuff, so I got this new phone account set up last night…" Phaeism produced a cell phone from his pocket. "It's got all the security features so it…"

"It's not necessary," Carrie said with a smirk. "I have a way for us to stay in touch." Robin reached to her belt and pulled one of the two communicators she'd brought with her—the ones given to her by the original Jump City Titans—and handed it to Phaeism.

"You're not serious?" he said. "Is this T for Titans?"

"They were a gift," she said. "If you're that embarrassed, we don't have to call ourselves Titans, you know."

"Actually.." Phaeism trailed off, "I was going to say 'are you sure we can live up to the namesake?'"

Carrie blinked twice, her face blank. "Oh."

"I mean, they beat Trigon and fought Deathstroke and froze the old Brotherhood of Evil up and all."

Carrie felt her face show her annoyance. "Point taken," she said dismissively. "We'll just use them as cell phones. If we find more people, we'll see what happens."

"Sounds like a plan. By the way, nice place you have. How did you find the tracking device?" The way he said nice, the sarcasm was evident in his voice.

This got a glare from Carrie. "Yeah that. Real clever, P'haeism," she said, intentionally mispronouncing the name. "Washed it out in the shower."

"Well, nice to know I can do subtlety," he said. "Just a trust thing, I guess. Anyway."

Carrie nodded. "Let's get to work.**"  
**

* * *

Later that night, after several leads had turned into dead ends, Robin had decided to patrol for a while before turning in. It was an uneventful night for crime, though. She'd stopped one mugging, but that was about it. Using her jet boots, cape, and bat grapple, Robin deftly glided and swung through the sky scrapers of Jump City, flipping over a buttress and then swinging below another in a huge loop, landing back on the first one.

The building it was attached to looked like something right out of Gotham City, which at least gave her a sense of home, however fleeting. The island where Titans Tower once stood now seemed a lot closer to the shore since they'd begun using hover technology to build over top of the bay, and the tall STAR Labs facility that stood their now, a black obelisk against the midnight blue sky, was now a monument to the flow of time. That thing had once sent up California's first commercial spaceflight; now it was just an tomb that marked the grave of the town, which used to be so much… sunnier, if the old pictures and videos she saw were truly real.

Suddenly, something caught her eye—a glimmer of light down near the darkness of the Undercity. She swung down to the lower level where the light was coming from, where a closer examination revealed three young men that looked to be in their late teens or early twenties… And judging by their demeanor they appeared to be up to no good.

The weird thing was their skin. It was as though a faint light was coming from underneath it… And they all dressed in the same manner, too, with heavy black hoodies and black jeans, chains hanging from their pants and spiked bracelets on their wrists…

Robin wondered if this wasn't her first experience with the much-talked about Light Brigade.

As they weren't actually doing anything illegal—yet—Carrie trailed them from a distance, making sure she wasn't heard or seen. And then she saw them get into an elevator that went straight down to the bottom of the Undercity. Carrie's eyes widened. Three young men going down into the worst part of town this late at night? Trouble was afoot.

Fearing the elevator shaft, Robin dropped straight down beside the building that housed it, free falling at first, and then using her memory-fabric cape to glide past some narrow corridors.

Finally she saw the bottom, an ancient asphalt street that hadn't been paved in ages—dandelions the size of tulips and the color of rust grew from in between the cracks in the pavement. But before she could land, gravity suddenly when awry, slowing her down in mid flight and negating her cape's ability to help her navigate.

The interference vanished quickly as it appeared, but, her cape wouldn't resume its shape. Robin quickly used her grapple gun to save herself a painful landing and swung to the top of a run-down building that was now dwarfed by the newer ones built atop the old city. This was the Jump City the Teen Titans had protected.

A metal-sounding pounding noise registered on her visor's audio-graph, and then she began to hear it, accompanied by several other mechanical sounds. Heading in that direction, Robin came across an open square, and in the middle there was a hovering truck that resembled a dump truck, but with one of the side walls opened like an oven hatch…

And there was also a person there. As Robin got closer, she realized that it was a young black woman with a disaffected scowl and a company logo on her blue and gold jacket. The jacket matched her pants, and some heavy duty boots covered her feet. She was picking up wreckage from a nearby crashed vehicle and throwing it in the back of the dump truck—and not just little bits and pieces; the woman clearly had some strength on her. Metahuman caliber, by the looks of it.

Suddenly, the three men from above appeared on all sides of the young woman picking up the wreckage. "Heylow there, ugly thing," one of them said. "You ready to join the Light Brigade yet?"

The man—who Carrie could now see had the word 'Shimmer' on his hoodie, pulled out a syringe and gave the woman a wicked smile. "C'mon, Clairey, you know you want to…"

"No, Shimmer," she said, "I really don't want to join your stupid racist cult. I never have, and I never will."

"You'll regret that!" shouted another of the Light Brigade members, this one labeled 'Glimmer'. He didn't really seem to have any way of backing up his words, as he was the youngest and least physical-looking of the three.

She ignored him and put another piece of garbage in the truck. "Will I?" The thing she just put in seemed to baffle her. "Who would throw a perfectly good Force Cannon down into the Undercity like this?"

The final Light Brigadier stepped up—Simmer—and pulled off his hoodie to reveal a white tank top underneath, that fully showed off his physique. Well, sort of, as there was a cloud of light around it that prevented any detail from being seen. "You ain't listening right, punk!" he said. "We're gonna spiff you up until you join us."

Simmer took a swing at Claire, and Robin leaped into action, hoping she wasn't too late...

But the young woman surprised Robin by bringing her left arm up in defense, and then jerking Simmer forward by his own arm, throwing him on his back several feet away. "You want to fight?" she said. "Fine."

Suddenly, she tore off her jacket and threw it in front of the truck. And Robin goggled. Both her arms were prosthetic—mechanical to the sight as well as in function. No wonder she was so strong. They were coated in a white-silver metal chassis that seemed to interface with her nervous system at her back, as metal covered Claire's shoulder blades and went all the way across. "We'll fight on my terms."

All she was wearing under her jacket was a jet-black strapless sports bra that revealed her abdomen and neck muscles were well toned. Zero body fat. Even Carrie hadn't yet achieved that!

The woman—though honestly that was only technically, as she couldn't be any older than twenty—called Claire immediately tore into Shimmer, punching him so hard he staggered back and spat out blood (which also had a faint glow)…

He picked up a nearby lead pipe and swung it at Claire, but she caught it with both arms and jerked it away with one while simultaneously smashing Shimmer in the face with her free arm, then hitting him in the leg with the pipe.

Shimmer screamed out in agony, and fell to the ground as Claire turned her lead pipe towards Glimmer. But he just backed away, gulping, and then turned an ran, leaving his compatriots lying where they were. "Losers," muttered Claire.

She turned and pressed several buttons on the side of the truck, causing the door on the side to close, then picking up her coat and climbing into the passenger seat as the automatic driving system took her up.

She never knew or cared to take notice of the tracking device that Robin had slipped behind the propulsion unit of the truck during the fight.


	5. The Good Ole Days

**Titans Tomorrow ****  
Chapter Five: Good Ole Days**

_My name is Claire. I happened to be born to a family with the surname Brichton, pronounced 'Bright-un' and I swear nothing could be more ironic. My parents must have been stupid to even think about marrying each other, cause they could never get along. _

_I guess more than anything else, that's what drove me down to this awful place. The Undercity. Thank God I don't live here, but I work here. Or at least I used to. I have a new job now, and it's one I never thought possible in a million years. Strange that someone like me could gain the status that comes with being on a team of premiere city-defenders. It's put some people I care abut in danger, though, so it's not all sunshine and roses. _

_I guess you could say I got lucky. This is how it happened. My name is Claire, and this is my story.  
_

* * *

Another day, another eight hours in the worst place in Jump City. The bottom. The _very_ bottom. These were the thoughts running through the mind of the young woman as she carried a large piece of a chunked tanning bed—her first 'catch' of the day—and threw it into her specially assigned truck. Several robots scurried about her aiding her in her task, mostly to prove they could be useful and wouldn't get sent up to be scrapped themselves. Self-preservation circuitry at its finest. She wondered where all the robots had been two days ago when she'd had her run in with the Light Brigade. 

Claire wiped perspiration from her forehead with a gloved mechanical hand. _Whew_, Nine in the morning and she was already sweating like a fat man in a sauna. No breeze down in the depths. She turned and grabbed the last remaining piece of the tanning bed and threw it in the back of the truck… Only to goggle when she saw a young woman leaning against it on the other side.

Red hair, green eyes, but not the beauty queen type, wearing civilian clothes that could have been Wal-Mart, Abercrombie, or _Versace_ for all Claire new. In other words, she couldn't tell if this was some rich kid trying to prove she 'cared', some poor kid hoping Claire had a hand out, or something in the middle.

"Who the spiff are you?" Claire asked, arching an eyebrow.

The red head just smirked. "That certainly is a popular insult around here. Spiff…"

"You're not from here, I take it," Claire said. That much had been obvious at first glance. "You're from…?"

"Gotham City," she said.

Claire hadn't expected that response. Gotham City was on the other side of the country. "What brings you all the way over here? And down in this dump, for that matter?"

Suddenly, the red head grew very serious. "I saw you fighting those Light Brigadiers the other day. And I'm new in town. I was wondering if you wanted to… maybe join up with me?"

"Join up with you?" Claire parroted. Now she new something was going on. "What, like some sort of cult or something?"

The red head promptly facevaulted.

"Actually," she said, reaching into her pocket and pulling out a small silver and black communicator. She proffered it to Claire. "Something this city needs and hasn't seen in a long time."

Silence hung for a good five minutes in the air as Claire stared at the Titan-Com in the red head's hand. How could she possibly respond to something like this?

Finally, what came out was, "You're joking, right?"

The red head frowned. "Not at all."

"How did you find me? We're nowhere near the place I fought those Light Brigade goons last night."

The red head walked over to the truck and reached behind a propulsion unit, and pulled out a small bat-shaped tracking device, and threw it at the ground at Claire's feet. Then she raised the edge of her shirt and tapped a button on her belt, and suddenly, light flashed and the young woman was replaced.

By none other than Robin.

"You are really serious," Claire said, completely at a loss for words. "You want to make me a spiffing Teen Titan 'of the future'?"

"Well, we're not calling ourselves that yet. And by 'we', I mean the two of us. But I'm not opposed to it."

"I think you've got the wrong girl," Claire said. She moved pointedly to her truck, brushing Robin aside, and pressing a 'clear' button that would send the automatic pilot on to the next stop on the trek through the dimly lit streets below.

Robin stood and stared as the truck drove off.

* * *

_Just my luck,_ Phaeism thought, as he and his opponent circled around the dusty office room. _I just had to find the thug with an electric nightstick._

Indeed, the known criminal in front of him, Gus Russell, worked as a body guard for a weapons trafficker that Alex had spent the last several days following clues to find. Finally, perhaps, the case could be cracked open.

Unfortunately, Gus was going to douse a bucket of water on that spark of an idea. Phaeism had learned the hard way that a little electricity and some ingenuity could go a long way to taking the fight out of him. He wasn't used to taking blows in his solid form, so he'd have to find a way to stay mostly gas. Not easy if Gus were to make contact with that nightstick.

Gus lunged forward, and Phaeism dove right, bounding off a chair and landing behind the guard's desk, kicking it up towards the guard. Gus staggered back as it hit him in the lower body and then tried to throw it out of the way, but Phaeism had anticipated this, and dispersed into a murky smog on the floor, then coalesced into a solid and slammed a battering ram-shaped appendage into Gus' stomach as the guard stepped forward again.

Alex bounded away and returned to his teenager form in mid air, but wasn't fast enough to avoid an errant angry swing from Gus' nightstick, which sent a current through his half-solid body forcing it to become fully solid. Spiff!

Hitting the ground hard, he rolled away as Gus kicked at him, snarling something about the 'meddling kid' and setting his weapon to recharge…

Wait, it had to recharge after a discharge—that was useful information, Alex realized. He grabbed the chair from earlier and swung it at Gus' head. The guard stepped back, and caught it on Alex's second swing, but by this time, the teen had managed to revert to his half solid state. Which meant that when Gus tried to turn the chair on him, he only eased Phaeism's dispersion into fog.

Wisely, Gus held his breath and backed away using the chair itself as a shield to block the solid-appendage attacks that erupted from the gas every now and then...

A blade appendage came out and sliced the legs off the wooden chair that had been forced into a service so far removed from its normal function, and then wrapped around Gus' legs, tying him up.

Unfortunately, it didn't get to his arms fast enough and Gus was able to discharge the weapon again. The voltage hadn't charged up enough to fully revert him to normal, but it forced him away from the current and back into a roughly human shape. "Boss!" Gus called into the door behind him, and Alex realized that they fight had gone into the next room and all the way to the boss's door.

Using the momentary distraction to his advantage, Alex grabbed two of the sawed off chair legs and charged at Gus, flailing them in as good an imitation of real Escrima as he could, first disarming the chair back and seat from Gus' left hand and then, by chance, doing the same to the accursed nightstick in his left.

Left defenseless, Gus just shielded his eyes as Phaeism ploughed through him into the office of Boss Griffin…

And found two of them.

Or, more accurately, a man who looked like Boss Griffin standing over the cowering form of another man who looked like Boss Griffin, holding a fireball. The one still standing looked at Phaeism and swore, then raised his glowing right hand and plunged it towards who was presumably the real Boss.

But Phaeism was quicker than he looked, and sent one of his chair legs flying. The surprisingly accurate projectile it the hand of the doppelganger. The would-be murderer flinched long enough for Boss Griffin to roll out of the way, right next to Phaeism who cracked him over the head with the other chair leg. He had to stay where he was while Phaeism dealt with the intruder… Who shall now be called Fake until his true name is revealed.

Phaeism dived at Fake, shoulder ramming him and then transforming into gas. Fake jumped back, a duo of ice elemental spells appearing on his hands, which he cast forwards at Phaeism. The fog cloud hit the ground and rolled forward, coming up and slicing a deep gash into Fake's leg before hovering away and using a solid tendril to flip Boss Griffin's desk on the fake one.

Fake growled as Phaeism returned to mostly solid, the formed his arms into hammers and began pounding mercilessly on Fake's apparently rubber face…

"_Electrum Vunderbar_!" Fake shouted, and suddenly a field of electricity surrounded him, just as Phaeism's hammer slammed into his face. Alex was sent flying backwards and slammed into the wall. He wanted to pass out, but refused to allow himself to do so. It was bad enough that he was having trouble staying conscious, but then he saw Fake try and wiggle his spongy body out the window…

"No, none of that!" Alex shouted, grabbing the first chair leg he had thrown and throwing it again, but this time attaching some of his solid matter to it, just as he had when taking out Bruno, Tony, and Clyde's car, to seemingly match its speed. This time, though, he used himself as an anchor for the chair leg, which impaled all the way through Fake. "Get over here!"

Phaeism jerked Fake back in through the window, where he slammed his head against the overturned desk with a resounding crack.

The doppelganger Boss Griffin staggered backwards, and then, reverted to a new form… One that was somewhat familiar… And yet one Alex was sure he had never seen before.

"What are you?" Phaeism barked, standing up on shaky feet.

The shape-shifting young man in the blue and black unitard bowed. "You may call me Aquarius," he said. "I suppose the jig is up, so I bid you adieu."

"Aquarius…" Phaeism repeated…

He'd be sure to remember that**  
**

* * *

The company robots finally got to the site where Claire was working around 10:30, and helped her clean up a giant robot that had fallen into the Undercity after the Giant Robot World Championship in October. That always left some interesting garbage down there, Claire thought. Well, it had for the past three years. 

Just as she finished erasing the hard drive for transit through the magnetic/gravity field above, Claire heard a pitter patter on the roof of her truck and climbed the ladder on back to investigate.

She was only half surprised to find Robin kneeling atop the truck, watching the robots work.

"You're still following me. I thought you took the tracking device off the truck."

"You didn't notice me slipping another one onto your jacket?" Robin asked with a smirk.

"This isn't funny, freak," she said. "I told you before, I'm not interested in joining your club."

"Didn't you say something similar to the Light Brigade the other night? Do I look like one of them to you?"

"You don't need me," Claire said. "I'm fine down here."

Robin scowled at her. "You can honestly tell me that you're happy down here in the Undercity doing work for robots? I mean, why are they even using you anyway? This is work below humans."

Claire jumped down from the truck and looked at the ground, not thrilled with Robin's assessment, obviously. "You think they care up there? They get better work for less money paying me minimum wage than they would if they had to maintain just one more unthinking robot drone. Bottom line is I help _their_ bottom line. And they pay me enough to get by, which is more than say for anywhere else that hires people who didn't graduate high school."

"But you're still young—you really want to waste your life down here picking up scrap all day?"

"Oh, and I'm sure you'll cover my rent and give me enough money for food if I join your Titans?" Claire looked down. "Look, I appreciate what your type does, but I'm just trying to get by."

…This made Robin frown. There was something she could say, but she was afraid it wasn't entirely true. "I have contacts," she blurted out. "I can get us funds. You won't have to work—except of course for hero work. And that's got to be safer than this place. I swear I fought three different types of ferocious animals I've never seen before. I didn't know that God ever painted a tiger purple before."

"If the lavender lynx is the worst you encountered," Claire said with a frown, "then be thankful you didn't run into anything truly nasty down here."

"I'll remember that." Robin said.

The last of the salvable parts of the Giant Fighting Robot in the truck, Claire led Robin over to it. "Come on, I want to show you something," said the young cyborg. "It's not far.**  
**

* * *

"Once again," Phaeism said, his annoyance growing, "who wants you dead?" 

"I told you, I cannot say! If I speak their name, they will surely find out and destroy me!"

"I'd say your career and life as you knew them are pretty much over, Griffin," Alex said. He had been interrogating the guy for a good thirty minutes by floating high above the city and dropping him towards it, then catching him. It hasn't seemed to work yet.

"They will find a way!" He shouted, beginning to panic. "They have eyes—everywhere!"

"Good gosh almighty, who are these people? The Dark Lord Sauron?" Alex looked at the troubled criminal again, and frowned. He was clearly too panicked to answer any questions without assurances of his safety.

"Look, if it makes you feel any better, my mentor Daniel has a place where we can keep you to protect you from whoever tried to kill you. But I have to know who it was. I have some powerful friends and we're going to try and bring them down."

Boss Griffin nodded, slowly calming down. "Okay… he is… The Brain."

"The BRAIN?" Alex said. "As in those old Tom and Jerry cartoons with the lab mice?"

"Clearly you do not know your supervillain history or your animation history, child," Griffin said sarcastically. "The Brain is the leader of the Brotherhood of Evil. They are here, in Jump City. I do not know what they want, but it can be nothing good. I only agreed to help them because they threatened my life and because our interests were, at the time, the same. Now they have betrayed me, and they will come after anyone who tries to pursue them."

"The Brotherhood of Evil…" Phaeism mouthed… "What could they be doing in Jump City? I thought they were dead."

"I assure you…" Griffin said, "They are not." And with that, Boss Griffin fell unconscious.

Then it hit him. Aquarius' costume was almost exactly like the one once worn by Madame Rouge. Only it was blue instead of red. Could it be… He'd once read that Rouge had a daughter named Gemini…

Gemini… Aquarius…

Magic to make up for the dilution of the biological gifts over the generations.

It made sense.

Phaeism blinked, suddenly somber. He had to get call Robin. She needed to know this—if it was true, it was suddenly a whole different ball game**  
**

* * *

Carrie and Claire arrived at a strange square within the under city in front of a building with a triangle-shaped upper section… Full of tables. Above the building as a sign that read 'Slice Pizza'… 

"A restaurant?" Carrie wondered aloud.

Claire explained. "Not just any restaurant; this was the place where the Teen Titans—the old group—ate all the time. This square here was where Starfire first landed on Earth."

"Why is it so pristine?" Carrie asked. It had taken her a minute to realize how clean and unbroken it was compared to the rest of the buildings in the area. It was as though someone had wrapped it in a layer of frozen time and left it since the early part of the century.

"They made it a monument. After the battle of Zanzibar, some of the Titans died; so did some of the League and the Justice Society, but the world was safe once again. They dedicated the Pizzeria as a museum to the Titans."

"Wow…"

"Yeah 'wow'," Claire said sarcastically. "And now, here it is in the Undercity with the rest of society's refuse. Heroism is fleeting, Robin. You're hated while your alive, honored when you die, and forgotten by the next generation. What's the point of being a Teen Titan when nobody cares about the Titans anymore?"

Carrie Kelley looked up and let the words pass through her, but never let them register. "You're wrong," she said simply. "People haven't forgotten, they just need someone to remind them."

"And you think I'm going to help with that?" Claire was clearly not impressed by Carrie's words. "What can I possibly do?"

"Well, for one, you have brown skin and cyborg arms. That's a start." Robin's face betrayed her fun-making.

"So the Bird Girl has a sense of humor," Claire said. "Fine then. I'll give them my two weeks notice and join your little club. Maybe you're right, and at least it will get me out of the slum where I live now. Where do we meet?"

Carrie chuckled. "We've been meeting on the Space Needle."

This prompted Claire to facevault.

"I don't figure you talents lend to getting yourself up there, so next time it will be my apartment. Until we can find a more permanent HQ, that is."

Robin pulled the Titan Com off her belt and handed it to Claire. "I'll call you when my place is ready."

Suddenly, Carrie's own communicator blared, a message from Phaeism. "Robin here, what's up?"

"Geez, Robin, where have you been? I had to get all the way down to the Space Needle to contact you. We have some big problems and I don't want to discuss them in public. Can we meet at your apartment?"

"Sure. By the way, I've got a new recruit, I think. Explain later. Robin out."

Robin glanced over at Claire. "So, you have a code name?"

Claire's eyes widened. "Oh, no, you're not slapping one of those on me. No way. Now let's get out of here before the spider voles come out."


	6. Showboating

**Titans Tomorrow ****  
****Chapter Six: Showboating**

"That can't be right," Carrie said emphatically. "Phaeism, there is no Brotherhood of Evil. The Brain died at Zanzibar. Most of the old guard of Supervillains did."

"They never recovered his body," Alex pointed out.

Robin blinked. "Alex. He's a BRAIN. He doesn't _have_ a body!"

Alex scratched his head for a moment, and then said, "Oh, right. I swear I need to read up more on twenty-first century Supervillains. And twentieth century animation history."

The newest member of the three-person group arched her eyebrow. "Animation?" asked Claire.

Phaeism looked at the ground. "Long story."

"This is getting us nowhere," Carrie said. "If Boss Griffin really believed that the Brotherhood was the group that he was trafficking the weapons for, then he probably actually saw the Brain. That doesn't mean it _was_ the Brain."

"Huh?" asked Claire.

"Think about it. This Aquarius guy you fought was a shape shifter, right? Could he not have been impersonating a Brotherhood of Evil member?"

"Well, I thought of that myself at first—but…" Alex trailed off. "I started searching and found this." Alex handed what he had found—some computer printout sheets about Aquarius—to Robin and she began to look over them, reading what she deemed important out loud.

"'Aquarius, real name Cameron De Mille. Age, Twenty-Nine. Believed to be the bastard grandson or great grandson of Laura De Mille, aka Madam Rouge.'" Carrie read on several paragraphs in silence, and then her eyes widened when she saw what Alex was referring to. "Oh, you mean this: 'Upon his first capture in 2045, it was discovered that his ability to shape-shift never developed as thoroughly as that of his grandmother, and that he utilized a strange energy to aid him in shape shifting. This energy, said to be arcane in nature by Rachel Roth-Jefferson, aka Dr. Fate, allowed him to cast elemental spells and shape his body into the form of another person. **However**, he was unable to assume the form of anything but generally humanoid shapes.'"

"And the Brain," Alex explained, "doesn't qualify. Last time he was seen alive he still looked like a Dalek."

Robin nodded, and read further. "'When last seen in 2047, just after escaping from prison, he mentioned that he was going to find the Brain and help him reestablish the Brotherhood, despite the fact that the Brain had been believed dead since then climax of the Great Supervillain War.'"

Claire shook her head. "The 'Great Supervillain War'? Who comes up with these names?"

"In all honesty," Alex said, "that name was really a dishonest attempt by the media to cover up the real nature of the conflict."

"What do you mean?" Robin asked. She knew that there had been a huge final battle between the heroes of Earth and most of the old Supervillains at Zanzibar Island about thirty years ago, but the war leading up to it wasn't really something often talked about.

"The so-called supervillain war got the name from the fact it was started and led by some of the worst. The Brain had recruited Phobia and Psimon into their group in order to manipulate the emotions of people, but the emotions were there to begin with. Anti-metahuman sentiment was out of control at the time, and after Kaznia's first metahuman president was assassinated, a huge war broke out. The Brain and his allies tried to benefit from it, but they were only the generals. The soldiers were metahuman _civilians_, neither hero nor villain, who were fighting perceived and real persecution.

"Mallah had been upgraded by being turned into a cyborg called Meta-Mallah, and General Immortus had finally committed suicide after pondering living eternity as a decrepit old man. His replacement was General Zahl. Like Immortus he knew all the strategies of the world's greatest battles. But he also knew how to _use_ them. Zahl and the Brain led the entire conflict to Tanzania where they threatened to use a device to destroy all the normal humans in the world. Of course, it wasn't real—if the energy contained within the device would have actually been released, it would have just killed everyone within its radius indiscriminately. But the heroes fell for the trap and almost lost everything. They would have if AMAZO hadn't finally returned from outer space. Long story, that one."

"You a history major?" Claire asked with an arched eyebrow.

"Well, actually I'm not in college yet," Phaeism said, "but I probably will choose that major when I go."

Robin shook her head. "I think that was rhetorical. Okay, nothing you said, stands out as incorrect, Alex, but it doesn't solve the problem of how can the Brain be alive?"

"He survived Paris," Phaeism said. "He survived all his battles with the Doom Patrol. How do we know he didn't have a proverbial back door to his fortress?"

Robin thought of pointing out that it was the original Batman who had planned the attack, and he would have thought of something like that, but decided that even Bruce couldn't have anticipate everything.

Phaeism then added. "They all thought Trigon was dead and then he came back and took over the spiffing..."

"POINT TAKEN," Carrie blurted, interrupting Phaeism's rant. Yeesh, the guy would not let something die.

"Then if we accept that we are dealing with the honest-to-God Brotherhood of Evil… what now?" Claire asked. "We're three people against who knows how many? And I'm still not sold on doing this spiff yet."

Robin smiled at this—the smile she knew Claire and Alex hated so much. "Interesting that you should ask that." She pulled out a newspaper she'd purchased a couple days earlier. The headline for the story she was pointing out?

**SUPERBOY WORLD TOUR COMES TO JUMP CITY**  
**Will be here from Monday till Wednesday**

It was Monday**  
**

* * *

_My name.. is famous! My parents call me Kevin Kent. Their names are even more famous than mine, of course. Conner Kent and Cassie Sandsmark-Kent, the former Superboy and Wonder Girl. And here's me, their son. How awesome is that? Who wouldn't love to be the biological grandson of **Superman** and **Zeus**? _

_I'm loving it at least. _

_See, all my older sisters—Power Girl, Supergirl, Wonder Girl, and Flamebird—they're great and all, but they have no style. They use their powers as low-key as possible, never accepting the glory and fame they rightfully deserve. And where's the fun in that? _

_That's why I came to Jump City. It was part of my tour around the world to get my name out there. I wore a costume that looked like a bad cosplay of my dad's, but that was just a friendly elbow to the ribs. Unfortunately, he returned it, and he can elbow HARD. I kind of got cut off from my allowance after bringing about twenty girls and a couple friends home one night for a (beer free, of course) party. My dad decided to kick me out of the house for a while. Uncle Clark wasn't too happy about what I did, though nor what my dad had done. I lived with him for a while, though it was kind of lame. He hasn't talked much since Aunt Lois died, even after the kid Batman cut that Starro thing off his chest. _

_So, then, this guy, Max Leech, came and said he could promote me like no tomorrow if I went on a world tour with him. So I agreed (after a thorough background check, of course.) He got me action figures, T-Shirts, merchandise, the works, and I got to beat up Supervillains all over the planet and impress the ladies of all 300 countries. _

_Well, that was the plan at least. It's strange how a giant elephant person, two spandex chicks and a guy made of green vapor can derail the best laid plans But in a way, I'm glad it happened. I became a Teen Titan. And though I didn't realize it at first, that's worth all the action figures on the planet. _

_My name is Kevin Kent; I'm Superboy. And this is my story._

* * *

Max Leech held the megaphone up to his mouth has he spoke, the hovering tour car gliding deftly through Jump City's sky lanes. "Come one, come all!" he said. "See the one and only, the fabulous Superboy!"

Crowds of nerds and adoring hot babes cheered as Kevin leaned back in the convertible seat and pulled a pair of his trademark shades over his eyes. This was certainly the good life.

The car finally came to a stop near the Alva Industries building, where the chairman of the Jump City branch had set up a hovering platform for fans and groupies, where Superboy could have some fun and sign some autographs. That's how he did things.

Max tapped him on the shoulder, drawing his attention over. "You ready, kid?"

"Always."

"Then let's do this!"

Max once again made his announcement, even as Superboy leapt from the convertible and did an air-lap around the platform…

And wild applause erupted from the audience, almost as though they'd never seen a guy fly before. Ah, what did he care? It was fun. Slowly Kevin came to a landing and used his tactile telekinesis to keep the mob from tackling him.

"One at a time, please, ladies and groupies."

"That's right!" announced Max, charging forward. "My boy Kor-El here is an A-Grade star, y'hear. I mean, who do you think he is, Oprah H. Hubbard? He ain't no savior, he's a celebrity!"

Kevin also arched an eyebrow, raised his finger and began to correct Max's spiritual leader malapropism, but decided against it. Leech probably didn't know the difference between Voltaire and Billy Graham. "So… I'm ready to sign autographs." His announcement drew another burst of cheering from the audience.

"Atta boy, Kor," Max said, walking off to a safe distance. Kevin winced at yet another use of his Kryptonian name. They'd never let him forget he was the son of the Lame-with-a-capital-'L' father of his, Kon-El.

Nevertheless, the crowd began cheering again.

He basked in it and allowed a huge smile to stretch across his face. "They love me.**  
**

* * *

High above the platform where Superboy was signing autographs, two figures glared down at the scene with utter disgust.

One is familiar… Aquarius.

The other is a hulking brute of a man, at least ten feet tall. He wore no visible clothing but a pair of shorts made of an unknown material that resembled Aquaman's shirt, only jet black. His skin was grey and rough, looking something like the bark of a palm tree. And his massive face had two huge tusks jutting out, the picture framed by massive fleshy ears. It was an intimidating package to say the least.

"I don't like it, Aquarius," said the large man, his voice a low raspy grumble. "First the little wench from Gotham shows up, then gas-boy discovers you. Now this guy is here signing autographs on our turf."

"Calm yourself, Elephant Man," said Aquarius. He rubbed his clean-shaven chin with two fingers. "Superboy is strong, but I do not believe he is any match for you."

The aptly named Elephant Man nodded in agreement. "Alone, no, but you know ever since this bloated… mutation happened to me, I've not been the fastest thinker. If we get them all teaming up…"

"The best way to prevent _that_," said Aquarius, "Is to move fast and strike now."

Elephant Man's eyes widened a bit at this. "But the Brain said not to attack unless…"

He was cut off. "The Brain said that we should assess the situation and act accordingly. I think when you encounter a child who is one quarter Kryptonian and one quarter Greek deity touring your city, action should be swift and deadly. Don't give the boy any time to figure us out. Do you not agree?"

After standing silently for a moment mulling over Aquarius words, Elephant Man nodded. Without saying a thing, he stepped over the side of the building and hurled himself at the youth below. This would be so much fun**  
**

* * *

"And make it out to Katie-Bug," said the pre-teen girl in front of Superboy.

"Katie… Bug…" Kevin parroted back, writing the name on the lunch box. "Here ya go, kid."

Screaming a yippee, the girl ran off and Max motioned the next in line to come forward…

Kevin raised his shades a bit. "Say, Max, is it getting darker?"

"Huh?" Max Leech called back. "It's just you, kid."

Looking straight up, Kevin narrowed is eyes from the glare of the sun. "I… think not." Kevin said. Suddenly, he blasted straight up , knocking his chair and table over as he flew…

And in the air, he and the hulking Elephant Man collided; the power of the punch sent windows shattering for blocks, and Elephant Man went flying straight back up the way he'd come…

For a bit…

He plummeted straight down again, faster than Superboy had anticipated, and it was clear he was going to slam into the platform if nothing stopped him. "Oh no you don't!" Kevin called. "You're not turning my fans into pancakes on my watch!"

Blasting forward, Kevin peppered his target with eyebeams and blasted underneath him, sending him flying onto an unoccupied section of sky bridge. Elephant Man's massive bulk shattered several overhead street lamp supports as he rolled along it, finally coming to a stop.

Kevin landed near to him, his arms crossed over his black T-Shirt and red-and-yellow emblem. "People like you make me sick, you know." Kevin said. "A lot of people paid good money to make this event possible and here you are trying to flatten them for it. Not cool, elephant face."

Elephant Man slowly stood up, wiping bit of blood from his mouth. "My name is Elephant _Man_!" he barked. "But you will get it right… before I finish you off."

"That's what Sideswipe said before I tore off all his weapons," said Kor-El. Elephant Man's annoyance drew a hearty chuckle from the teen. "Of course, he was a C-Lister to be sure. I'd like to see how you compare."

Famous last words, as the saying goes. Elephant Man blurred across the distance between Kor-El and where he'd been standing with incredible speed given his bulk, completely catching Superboy off guard. The punch he'd delivered to Kevin's upper body sent the teen reeling backward and slamming into the distant Alva Industries building behind him.

"And I think yer mistaken about one thing," said the mammoth. "I am not here to flatten your worshipers. I am here to flatten _you._"

Kevin pulled himself up out of the wall and hovered towards his attacker. "I could make a joke about how this makes it personal," he said, "But it already was the moment you interrupted the show. Kevin blasted forward and drove a series of powerful blows into Elephant' Man's face, sending the behemoth staggering backwards, stomping divots into the walk way.

Finally, Elephant Man timed a block just as Superboy committed to a powerful blow, and stopped the teen in his tracks. Then he returned the blow ten fold, smashing Kevin straight down through the concrete and metal towards the Undercity below…

Kevin used a burst of telekinesis to stop himself in mid air, then grunted as he saw Elephant Man leering down at him from the hole in the walk way. "Cheeky little…" he muttered. "Time to wipe that shway little smirk of his off his face."

Superboy blasted straight up, tearing a second hole in the platform right underneath Elephant Man and sending him flying into the air, and then following that attack up with a series of energy blasts from his eyes that burnt into the mammoth's flesh..

Or that was the idea.. The laser eyes didn't really seem to do much… And then Elephant Man flipped over in the air and smashed Superboy's shoulder with a powerful kick that sent him careening into the building on the opposite end of the sky bridge from Alva.

Once again, Superboy had to dig himself out of the wall. This time, however, he wasn't feeling so hot. That blow had taken a lot out of him, and his shoulder was still aching from the attack.

Kevin looked up to see his attacker stalk towards him, and he immediately stood up and took a battle stance. "_En garde_, freak!"

David and Goliath went at it again.


	7. Strength In Numbers

Author's Note: Credit where credit is due. Some of the ideas for the fight were taken from the_ Incredible Hulk Ultimate Destruction_ game for the Gamecube, Ecksbox, and PS2**  
**

* * *

**Titans Tomorrow **

**Chapter Seven: Strength In Numbers**

Elephant Man and Superboy charged at each other again, both clashing with a duo of powerful fists. The blow shattered more windows for blocks, but Superboy came out on the losing end, getting launched backwards towards the building he'd just dragged himself out of. But this time he had anticipated that outcome and prepared, flipping over in the air and springing off the building with his feet.

The push off he gave himself shattered the wall in a fifteen-foot radius around the point of impact, but it gave Kevin enough momentum to blast by Elephant Man. The sonic boom that occurred has he broke the sound barrier knocked Elephant Man on his backside, and Kevin turned around to make another pass…

This time the half-human peppered the brute with a stream of burst eye beams, which again did no damage. Still, Superboy moved much faster than Elephant Man, so as long as he kept up the momentum, he had the advantage.

Flying a good distance both vertically and horizontally from the attacking mammoth, Kevin let out a charged stream of his eye beam power, much stronger than the earlier bursts. Elephant Man dived out of the way and the beam slammed into the sky bridge; concrete and metal exploded out from the impact.

"Stand still, Elephant Thing." Superboy's taunts were audible at a distance via a talent Uncle Clark had taught him that essentially amounted to Super Ventriloquism. "This won't hurt _that_ bad!"

"Incorrigible punk!" barked Elephant Man, even as he stood up. Superboy was a step ahead of him, blasting him with another powerful burst of his eyebeams. His foe managed to raise his arms in time to block, but the attack slammed full into him, burning into the flesh on Elephant Man's arms and driving him back with kinetic force… And off the sky bridge altogether.

"Aw spiff it," Superboy spat as he flew after the brute, trying to make sure he didn't flatten anyone on the way down…

Elephant Man crashed through a narrow sky bridge and fell onto the Alva building's massive base below, right into an occupied parking lot. As pedestrians fled, Elephant Man pulled himself out of his own crater and grabbed cars and crushed them onto his fists as though they were boxing gloves. Even as Superboy landed, Elephant Man had already begun rushing him. Kevin managed to dodge his first two punches, but he was soon hit again and again by the makeshift brass knuckles.

His shirt torn and soaked in gasoline, Kevin blocked a blow with the sheer force of his anger and smashed Elephant Man into a dazed stupor. "I've had enough!"

Then he blasted his laser eyes… at his own clothing…

Instantly the gas fumes surrounding him ignited, and an explosion blasted both villain and away in opposite directions…

But Kevin wasn't an idiot. He used his tactile telekinesis field to keep the fire on his skin and not on his jeans; the effect was something like a fusion of the Incredible Hulk and The Human Torch, and it was just what the hybrid was going for. Kevin blasted forward, slamming a duo of flaming fists into Elephant Man's face, staggering the villain backwards. His own body felt like he'd need to sleep for a week to recover, but he had to stop his foe first…

"I guess I could call you _Dumbo_," Kevin joked, finally finishing his attack by lifting Elephant Man with his telekinesis and hurling him across the lot into the Alva building…

The fire went out and Superboy, minus his shirt, had not been burned in the slightest. His shirt, of course, was completely gone. This revealed that his arms were now very bruised from the fight, especially the shoulder that Elephant Man had kicked earlier. Kevin, much to his horror, realized that he was breathing hard; this might have been partly due to the fire consuming his oxygen, but…

"What is wrong, Kryptonian?" Elephant Man, now holding a metal street lamp, strode towards the topless hero with a calm confidence. "Has this fight taken a toll on you?"

Kevin shook his head. "Nah, I'm just getting warmed up."

"Then perhaps it is time for you to cool off." Almost as fast as Kevin could react, the metal post slammed into his side. A second strike missed when Kevin flew straight up, wondering why anybody would still even bother driving a car that used gasoline in 2049… Or maybe that was why Elephant Man had chosen that one… Who knows…?

"Come on Dumbo, you know I can take more than that!" Kevin taunted. Truthfully, though, that strike had hurt more than he cared to show. What was it about this stupid brute that allowed him to fight a quarter-Kryptonian quarter-god so effectively? Who did he think he was?

Obviously, he was currently Mario Mario, as he had just hurled himself into the sky with impossible jumping ability, managed to hit Kor-El with his metal pole once again. Superboy went flying straight downward, crashing through another sky bridge and through a window into a day-time dance club…

Panicking, Superboy ran to the window to see Elephant Man leaping up in order to attack him again. "You've got to be kidding me…"

"SUPERBOY! WE LOVE YOU!" screamed a teen babe nearby.

"Love you to, hottie," said Kevin, "but no time for that now. Big guy, really ugly, trying to kill me. Gotta run!" Kor-El threw himself out of the window and towards Elephant Man, slamming several powerful punches into his chest…

Elephant Man head butted the teen, knocking him backwards and then following up with another strike from his metal pole. (Apparently he was straightening out all the dents Kevin made after every strike.)

Superboy blasted down and landed in a water fountain around an outdoor shopping center. The fountain exploded and the water drenched his body. Kevin's head smashed against one of the chunks of the fountain and starting bleeding. It would take weeks to repair all the damage he was doing to the city…

And then he heard the sound of Elephant Man landing outside and the screams of confused shoppers as they fled in fright.

"You lose, teen hero," Elephant man said.

Kevin looked up to see that he had twisted the end of the street lamp post into a spikey instrument of death..

Kevin shivered. This was it… he was going to die… And he couldn't just restart the game or wake up in his bed and have it all be a dream…

This was _it_…

Elephant Man raised the spear and plunged it down into Superboy's bare chest… or at least that's what would have happened if a red and black blur hadn't streaked past him, dragging him away from being skewered.

"Wha…" Superboy asked, as he stared up into the masked face of a hot young redhead babe. "Who…"

"Robyn," she said curtly. "So much for you helping us."

"Huh?" Slowly Kevin sat up to see that the girl who had identified herself as Robin was not alone. Her two friends were another young man in a green coat that was circling around Elephant Man in a terrible Hapkido martial arts stance, and a young woman with cybernetic arms had a baseball bat…

They were clearly both spiffed.

Kevin then looked down at the 'R' emblem on the chest of the young woman who had rescued him, and suddenly realized why she looked so familiar. She wasn't a redhead named Robyn... she was **Robin**, sidekick to Batman!

Suddenly his hopes were raised a bit…

Very slightly**...  
**

* * *

Robin winced as she studied Superboy's wounds. He was a mess; that was for sure. She forced a way a few impure thoughts about how hot he was topless and pulled him to a place away from the battle. 

Thankfully it seemed that Elephant Man was focusing most of his attention of Phaeism, who, not being solid, was mostly immune to the brute's attacks. Claire's bat had proven ineffective, so she'd bounded away hoping to find something she could use to fight him with…

Robin got Superboy situated and then darted over to Claire. "Doesn't that arm of yours have a weapon form or something?" she asked.

"Well, yeah, but I have to get it ready and that takes a while…"

Elephant Man huffed and puffed, then blew Phaeism away; he immediately turned his attention to the girls and smashed a powerful fist in towards them. Claire and Robin both dived out of the way and Robin returned fire with two birdarangs, one sleep gas and the other exploding.

Neither seemed to have any significant effect on Elephant Man…

"I'll fight him, just get that arm of yours ready!" Robin turned towards her foe, drew her pair of escrima sticks and ran forward to attack him.

"Ugh, make my arm into a gun," Claire muttered in the mean time. _Like that's even legal… Of course I needed it to protect myself from the lavender lynx and vole spiders, but It can't be something so obvious…_

She unhitched a lever here and pulled a switch there, slowly transforming her arm into the photon cannon that the company had illicitly supplied her with.

Robin, on the other hand, used her agility and speed to hammer Elephant Man with all she had, and she seemed to come up empty handed.

Phaeism attacked him by trying to cut into his legs, but that seemed to be worthless. His hide was too thick to just slice open, so Phaeism had switched to try and trip him up. His assault seemed worthless, though, as he was mostly tripping him towards Claire…

Finally, Claire finished transforming her arm into a gun, and opened fire, blasted 'bullets' of concentrated photons into Elephant Man's thick hide. He reeled from the blast and staggered backwards, more in smarting pain that actual damage.

"Keep it up as long as you can," Robin shouted, hurling a flash-bang disc to blind Elephant Man. Claire fired several more shots before stopping to let her arm cool down.

Robin saw that he'd backed up to the edge above the Undercity, and decided that time was worth him smashing up some more stuff; her force gauntlets fired a blast that sent the massive brute flying off the shopping center platform into the abyss below…

The Titans quickly regrouped around the injured Superboy. "Are you okay, dude," Phaeism asked, offering a hand.

"I'm… alright," Kevin Kent said, standing up slowly and on shaky legs.

"You look like you've just lost a fight with a meat grinder," Claire said. "Is that guy really strong enough to beat you.?"

"He caught me off guard," Superboy barked. He was clearly being defensive.

"Listen," Robin said, "I doubt what I just did will keep him down for long, so if there is anything we can do to get you back into fighting shape before he recovers…"

"Take me up," Superboy said. "I'm part Kryptonian. If you let me get above the ozone layer, I can recharge faster."

"How do we get you up that high?" Claire asked, somewhat incredulous.

"I can fly." The tone in Kevin's voice was so obvious as to make Claire feel stupid. "Just get me to a roof top for a recharge."

"I can do that," Robin said, reaching for the young man…

Phaeism arched an eyebrow. "You know what, I'm not sure you two should be together. I swear I just saw lust in your eyes even through that mask."

Robin sweatdropped, but quickly regained her composure. "D..don't be ridiculous. You can't carry someone that fast…"

Pushing Robin aside in protest, Phaeism walked to Superboy and placed a hand on his shoulder. It was clear he was focusing deeply because his eyes were closed and his mouth completely still… Robin was good at reading people…

Suddenly, both Superboy and Phaeism dematerialized into a cloud of fog that begin to shoot straight up at a much greater average velocity than Robin climbing with her grapple or jet boots would have been.

"Nobody told me he could do _that_," Claire said.

Robin shook her head. "I would have if I'd known myself.**"  
**

* * *

At the very top of the building the cloud coalesced into Alex and Kevin once again… 

Superboy blinked. "Well that was interesting."

"I can morph anything within my bio-electric field as long as it is made of organic matter. That's why I can morph my clothing."

"Too bad," Superboy said, standing up and letting the sun beam down on his face and arms and chest, "you couldn't materialize me a new shirt."

"Not omnipotent."

Superboy nodded, letting the sun beam down on him a minute before throwing himself into the air towards the edge of the atmosphere.

Suddenly, Alex's communicator crackled with static. "Phaeism here," he answered it.

-Phaeism!- Robin's voice came from the other end. –Get down here now! Dumbo is back!-

Sighing in frustration, Alex walked to the edge of the building and let himself fall into the abyss below**  
**

* * *

Robin backflipped away as the hurled metal wrecking ball blazed past her into a nearby truck (the old, non-hovering variety) and caused it to explode. 

Claire continued to blast him with her photon cannon, but he seemed to be shrugging it off by this point, despite the fact the front of his body was covered in small burn marks.

"Can you throw that wrecking ball back at him?" Robin asked.

"I'd have to anchor myself and turn by gun back into an arm…"

Robin frowned. "Forget it then." She leapt into the air and hurled an ice explosive disk at her opponent, but he blocked it with his wrist… Ice spread out and covered his whole hand, and caused the Elephant Man to twitch.

"Wench!"

"Is that the best you got?" Robin smirked, drawing an electric birdarang.

Unable to break the ice off, Elephant Man charged at Robin with it still there, and she hurled her boomerang forward and it dug into his flesh and began to shock him.

Unfortunately, Phaeism arrived and struck him with a powerful bludgeon blow at exactly the same time..

Do the math…

Stunned and solid, Phaeism fell to the ground and gasped when he realized what had happened. Elephant Man jerked the birdarang from his flesh and dropped it, and then smashed the ice against the ground where Phaeism had just been. Alex had rolled out of the way and managed to losing his molecules up enough that he wouldn't die from an attack…

Still the ice would slow him down too, so he made sure to avoid things as best he could.

Claire came in staving off the mammoth's pursuit with some blasts from her photon cannon, and Robin blasted him from the side with her force gauntlets. "Focus fire! Take him down…

Elephant Man went down hard and got up screaming, a burst of anger prompting him to pound the ground. The shockwaves sent the young heroes flying backwards and gave the brute a chance to get his wits about him…

Suddenly, two foot falls reached his years, and Elephant Man turned to see Superboy, still shirtless but now with dry pants and his bruises largely healed, standing behind him with his arms crossed.

"You again?" he barked, clearly annoyed.

Superboy just spat on the ground in front of Elephant Man, and then pistoned back a fist and drove it directly into one of the photon canon burn wounds. Elephant Man shouted in rage and pain as he was sent sprawling backwards.

"Yeah. Me."

Robin got to her feet. "Come on, now! Hammer him! Everybody together."

Claire muttered a few choice curses and blasted at his knees while Phaeism turned into a pair of scissors and cut off one of his fleshy ears…

That drew the loudest cry yet, and when he swung to smash the culprit, he only hit gas.

Superboy followed up with another powerful punch, this time into the base of the brute's left tusk. The sound of ivory cracking had never been so satisfying.

Force gauntlets blasted Elephant Man back again, and Superboy flew underneath the wave and then uppercutted the mammoth into the air… A clearing that had a view of the ocean presented itself…

"Can you swim?" Kevin asked…

"Um… yeah…" Elephant Man was clearly confused.

"Good." And with that, Kevin blasted his most powerful kick ever into Elephant Man's rear, sending the brute flying off towards the horizon where he crashed into the bay near Titans' Island with a satisfyingly large splash.

Not believing what they had just seen, all the Titans stood wide-eyed as Superboy landed.

Kevin walked forward and studied the rag tag team, and finally said, "So, are we like gonna be a team or something, or was this like a one time deal?"

"Any reason you didn't do that before?" Claire asked, rubbing her aching shoulder where the metal attached to the skin. "Kicking him off into the horizon like that?"

Kevin shrugged. "I had to get into the right mindset. I guess you guys softened him up for me."

"Time out," Robin said, stepping forwards and idiosyncratically sticking a gloved finger to Kevin's chest. (Intentional or not, it still got reactions for Claire and Phaeism. They said nothing, though.)

"First of all, we're going to do a formal introduction, and then we'll talk about our offer." And I want your leech—your _agent,_ Leech, here so that he's clear on every decision."

She removed her finger from his chest and started chewing on her lip. "And please shower and dress decently. We're meeting on the roof top of MasterCorp tonight at seven."

"MasterCorp is where—" Phaeism started to stammer.

"Yes, I know," Robin said. The exhaustion in her voice was making her more curt than normal. "I put a tracking device in the arch of your right shoe. _Quid pro quo,_ after all."

Superboy just blinked… "So… why are you all talking about squid and tracking devices?"


	8. When There's Trouble

**Titans Tomorrow ****  
****Chapter Eight: When There's Trouble…**

As lawyers tend to think of themselves in modern times as a special class of citizen, above the rest of us, so think the lawyers of the future. And consequently, they took their sweet time in arriving at the agreed meeting place within MasterCorp. Nevertheless, they came: Superboy's attorney, one Mr. Siegel, and Max Leech's lawyer, one Mr. Shuster.

"Come on, kid," Leech sighed. The negotiations were clearly wearing on him just as much as everyone else. "This is crazy talk. You signed a contract." Leech glanced at Mr. Shuster for confirmation, and Shuster nodded.

"It's right here in black and white," Shuster said. "Max Leech for all intents and purposes, owns you, Mr. Superboy."

Across the table, Kevin frowned. "How can you own a person? That kind of craziness went out with the Civil War, man."

"Not if you agree to it, sir," Shuster deadpanned. "I'm sorry, but this contract is legally binding. You must continue to perform in Mr. Leech's shows until the world tour is over."

Shuster passed it back across the table, and Siegel studied it over Kevin's shoulder as the young super teen held it. "No, this is lame. I'm not property. Are you sure there is no loop hole in it?"

Suddenly, Kevin noticed that Mr. Siegel's eyes lit up, and he began whispering in the hero's ear.

Kevin smiled broadly, his mind already processing what Siegel had just said.

Max sweatdropped, fearing the worst. "It's hopeless, isn't it? I'm ruined!"

"Not at all, Max." Kevin stood up, still smiling broadly, and pulled his sunglasses off, dropping them unceremoniously onto the table. "This is a win-win situation here."

Leech seemed honestly perplexed, as did Shuster. "What do ya' mean, Kor?"

Superboy held out the contract and pointed to the place where he had signed it—the only signature in his penmanship on the contract. "Who signed this contract?" he asked.

"Um… you did," Max said. "And I did…"

"Read the name on the contract," Kevin insisted.

"Um… 'Superboy'."

Kevin allowed his smile to broaden, his expression becoming one of gleeful arrogance over his impending victory. "Superboy signed the contract. My legal name is Kevin Kent."

The realization hit Shuster so hard he reeled from it like a physical blow, causing Leech to turn and gasp, nearly panicking upon seeing the expression on Shuster's face.

"What's this mean?" Max demanded! "I'm a business tycoon, not a legal shark!"

"To put it simply," Kevin said. "You own the rights to my name, my merchandise, my shirts, action figures, video games.. but you don't own me. You still get your money, and I'm free to come and go as I please."

"But…" Max stammered…

"I'm sorry," Shuster said, keeling forward as if physically weakened by the revelation. "But your young charge here is correct. He signed the contract as Superboy, so that's all you actually own. The only course of action you can take now is demanding that he change his name."

Max, on the verge of weeping, looked up and shook his head. "No, no, that's fine, kid. You can call yourself Superboy if you want to…"

After the deal was settled with the online settlement judge, the parties involved began to clear out of the conference room.

"So," Max said, patting Kevin on the shoulder. "I guess this is it. Make me proud, Kor-El."

With that, he walked off the premises and out of Kevin's life.

Kevin stared at him, frowning as his former agent walked out the door. _Yeah right_, he thought. _More like 'make me rich, Kor-El'…._

* * *

Much to Carrie's surprise, Phaeism's caretaker Daniel had allowed them into the building and his expansive home/office complex on the top floor without much of a fuss. He said that his wife Samantha and he had always wanted kids but had never been able to have them, so when Alexander came to them, they were overjoyed. The Lamberts had apparently raised Alex from the time he was around three years old. His birth parents were unknown, because as an infant, something horrible had happened to him.

An adoption occurred, but it wasn't into a family. The couple were really a front for a super-science laboratory engaging in human testing. From eight months till three years, Alex had been subjected to experiment after experiment—that was how he'd gained his unusual powers. Finally in 2035 the aging heroes known as the Metal Men had shut down the genetics lab and rescued all the human experiments. Alex had been adopted by the family who named him, but when they had wanted to move away to Michigan, Alex had protested, wanting instead to stay with Daniel. So, once again, the kid had been transferred to the family here, under the care of the man who ran MasterCorp.

Daniel himself was an amiable man of fifty-five with spiky dark gray hair and a short but thick beard of the same color. He commanded a strange dignity that instantly let Carrie know she could trust him, and the fact that he let her use his expensive communications equipment didn't hurt any.

When asked what his last name was, Daniel had simply answered 'Chase', though Carrie was suspicious that this was a pseudonym. Why a man who couldn't possibly have any enemies would need one, she didn't know, but something about the look on his face when he'd said it seemed… odd to her.

Nevertheless, Robin was currently connecting to the JLU orbital Watchtower via a relay in Daniel's den. And that was really all that mattered to her at the moment, because her team needed some help—specifically a young cyerbnetically enhanced woman of nineteen who required a full 180 seconds to transform her illegal arm-gun modification.

Carrie knew who was on-shift that evening. As the relay connected, the friendly metal face of Victor Stone appeared on the screen in front of her.

"Well, if it ain't the Girl Wonder," said Cyborg, clearly glad to see Carrie. Or maybe just to see the old costume again. "Callin' the Watchtower from MasterCorp, I see."

"Evening, Mr. Stone," Carrie said, putting on her most respectful demeanor.

"Naw, don't call me that. Mr. Stone is my I-can't-believe-he's-still-alive-and-kicking father. I'm just Vic. I don't suppose you'd be calling here if you were looking for the kid Batman, so what's up?"

"Actually, I'm transmitting you some files now," Carrie said. "By the way, why does everybody up there call him 'the Kid Batman'?" Carrie thought a moment. "I mean I get that all the time from the Metro Tower too."

Cyborg glanced at the files, then responded. "You know McGinnis was just seventeen when he started as Batman, right?"

"Really? I'd always thought he was older… Wow."

"The first Batman was always so 'old', even when he was young, if you know what I'm sayin', that when you get some kid under twenty in the suit, things just feel different."

"I guess so," Carrie said. She realized that she was actually now older than her mentor was when he'd started. Strange how time flew so fast.

Cyborg finished viewing the files. "Whoa, so who exactly am I making these for? And are you sure you want a photon cannon? I always found good old sonic technology the best fit for me."

Robin shook her head. "A photon cannon is what she's used to, and her frame isn't bulky enough to carry sufficient power for a sonic cannon anyway. I just need some better arms than her old company gave her. The gun itself is illegal in this state—why not let her have it transform automatically then as well?"

Cyborg nodded his agreement. "And what are these cloth pads on the backs of the palms all about? Looks like it would make it hard to backhand someone."

"She says they're for wiping sweat off her forehead. Her words, not mine. I guess it makes sense."

Vic nodded, as if thinking back to the time before he became all-metal, when he'd needed to sweat wipe and found nothing but metal on flesh. "That's actually not a bad idea. Okay, Ms. Kelley, I'll see what I can do."

"Cyborg, if I'm going to call you Vic, you are going to call me Carrie or preferably Robin. My mother may not be 'alive-and-kicking' but that doesn't mean I'm ready to take her name."

Cyborg frowned, suddenly reminded of the loss of his own mother. Carrie winced. She hadn't meant to upset him. Vic shook it off though. That had been a long time ago.

"Agreed then," he said at length. "I'll send the arms down as soon as they're done."

"Thanks."

"Hey, by the way," Cyborg said, changing the topic. "I hope this ain't any indication that your starting something under the noses of the League."

"I suppose you're referring to the fight against the Elephant Man earlier," Robin said with a sigh.

"According to the report I read, Elephant Man and that idiot son of Conner's tore up the place real good."

Carrie shook her head and frowned. "Typical. We put a Green Lantern in the white house and the media still blames superheroes for the villains they stop. Nobody was killed, so I don't see what their deal is."

Vic just laughed, "Yeah, you're right. I should have known better than to trust the Jump City Chronicle. The paper that hired Trevor Washington couldn't be friendly to metahumans. It said y'all let him get away."

"Well, there is some truth to that one, but I think Kevin was just trying to get him to stop trashing things. He asked him if he could swim, then kicked him into the bay."

"Wow." Cyborg was clearly both impressed by the action but frustrated by the teen's lack of foresight. "Not had a jokester like that on the Titans since Changeling…" Vic trailed off, not wishing to recall that day at Zanzibar.

"Gar Logan sounds like a great guy…." Carrie also trailed off.

"He was," Vic said with a curt nod. Changing the subject, Vic brought up current events. "Speaking of the white house and the color green, isn't President Stewart supposed to be giving an address to the people tonight?"

"I'd planned on watching it," Carrie lied, nodding. In reality she'd been so busy with the weapon smuggling job that she hadn't heard a thing about it. Either way, Stewart was always a good speaker, and if he was addressing the nation it was probably important. She'd watch.

"I need to get off here," Robin said after a minute of silence. "Adios, Vic."

"See ya around, Robin," retuned Cyborg with a smirk. "By the way, tell Danny I said 'hi'!"

"You know Daniel?"

"Oh yeah. He used to be a Titan back in the day." And with that, the screen went dead, leaving Carrie with a lot to ponder.

* * *

_"Are you pondering what I'm pondering, Pinky?"_ asked the diminutive but large-headed rodent on Phaeism's TV screen.

_"I think so, Brain,"_ responded the tall and skinny—and much stupider mouse. _"Narf!"_

Alex instantly paused the video when Claire walked into the room, looking around and trying not to make eye contact with the young man in front of her. She wasn't exactly used to places like this.

"Feel free to make yourself at home," Alex said, indicating towards a very comfortable-looking sofa. "So you're name is Claire Brichton, right?"

"Look," Claire said, sitting but not really engaged in the question, "I'm not really feeling this place just yet. I know you all mean well, but I just met you what, ten hours ago.

"Twelve," Alex said, noting how long they'd been waiting on Kevin and his lawyers to finish. "Sorry to bother you, I just don't know much about you. We didn't really have that much time for chit chat earlier."

"If this 'team' thing sticks," Claire said, "there will be plenty of time for that later."

Phaeism frowned. This wasn't really where he'd wanted the line of questioning to go, so he tried something different. "I've got time now. I was just studying some old animation history at the behest of… this friend of mine."

He indicated the coffee table where several books on the history of both animation and 20th and 21st century Supervillains rested, some opened and others bookmarked.

"You like history," Claire observed.

Phaeism nodded. "It's like my heroin. _'If you do not know where you come from, you will always be a child.'_ … Marcus Cicero."

She didn't respond.

"Seriously, where do you come from?" he asked her. "You can tell a lot about a person from their background."

The young woman just looked away and frowned. "Not much to tell, really," she said. "My mom and dad, they both loved me to death. But they hated each other, always fighting. They never could work it out. Kind of drove me away from home. I hung out with my boyfriend a lot, but then I found out he was just trying to bed me. Wanted the 'thrill' of doing a 'robot chick', I heard him say."

Phaeism cringed. Some guys just made him hate humanity.

"The same night I heard that, I got home to find my parents going through one more fight, threatening divorce. Dad took his anger out on me when I came in… Started screaming at me like I'd done something wrong. So I'd just had it. I ran off and got a job throwing scrap into the back of recycling trucks. Lived alone in the strata just above the Undercity ever since."

Alex regarded her with sympathy, as much as he could muster. He hadn't really thought of the kind of conditions that would drive a girl to working down there. "Thanks," he said at length.

"Thanks?" Claire seemed honestly surprised by his gratitude.

"Yeah… for opening up like that. It must have took a lot of courage…"

She just shrugged, and muttered something like 'yeah, I guess,'…

The two sat in the room in silence, lost in thought for a few moments before Carrie—still in full Robin garb except for the mask—leaned into the room. "Hey, guys, President Stewart has called some sort of major emergency press conference. We might as well see what's going since the only real emergencies these days are of the Super Crime variety."

Thankful for something to do, Alex and Claire followed her into the TV room where Daniel and the newly-freed Superboy waited.

* * *

_"My fellow Americans," began President John Stewart. "It is with the utmost sincerity that I say, I wish I did not have to make this speech tonight. Unfortunately, there has been a breach on our southern boarder, and one that may have dire security consequences for the United States. _

_"A small group of metahuman terrorists were able to smuggle five canisters of the nerve agent DC#38 04-40 across the boarder between Chihuahua and Texas. We urge all levels of law enforcement and especially those that handle supercrime to be actively investigating this threat. As a former Green Lantern, I understand the value of super hero assistance, and encourage all heroes to actively help our law enforcement find this threat and expose it before it is able to harm a single citizen. _

_"I will now take your questions."_

* * *

"Well," Robin said, blinking. "That was unexpected."

"What's this DC Chemical he's talking about?" Claire asked. "A nerve gas or something."

"Worse than any nerve gas," Robin said. "It essentially nullifies the higher thought processes. North Korea once used it on Markovia and turned an entire village into soldiers for their communist state. Five canisters isn't enough to conquer a city, but…"

Daniel finally spoke up. "If it could be reproduced in large enough quantities to affect a whole city, it would have to be launched in some sort of rocket. This doesn't look good no matter how you slice it."

"So…" Phaeism looked at his hands, pretending they were more interesting than the discussion at hand. "What do _we_ do about it?"

"We keep our eyes open," Robin said. "And we keep after the Brotherhood. They're the biggest threat to this city. Five canisters of nerve gas are nothing compared to what the Brain is capable of."

"Then what are we waiting for?" Superboy said. "We shut them down, right?"

Daniel gave a laugh as he stood up and addressed the four teenagers. "I think it's been a long day, and after that humiliation, I don't' think the Elephant Man will try anything else tonight. Maybe it would be best if you all just slept here. We have plenty of extra rooms."

Phae nodded. "That we do."

Superboy begrudgingly agreed, and the exhausted teens retired for the night, awaiting the battle they knew would come eventually.

It was just a matter of time**  
**

* * *

"For your failure," a harsh electronic voice stated, "for disobeying orders, you, Elephant Man, will be punished." 

Elephant Man, strapped to a massive metal table with material that resembled the stuff his pants were made of, struggled against his bindings in the darkened laboratory where he was taken for both medical treatment and discipline.

"Please, Master!" cried the mammoth, "Aquarius said…"

"Aquarius forced you to do nothing, Elephant Man," the voice interrupted him. "He merely put the suggestion in your mind. You were the one who acted upon it."

"But…" Elephant Man's protest was interrupted when a devastating current of electricity surged through him, rattling his bones from within and making him want to scream, yet unable to do so.

When it subsided, Elephant Man was quiet.

"The attack on young Superboy was a disaster," announced The Brain, turning from his punishment station and wheeling over to a place where several shadowed figures, one of them Aquarius, were gathered. "Who here would be best suited to rectifying our friend's mistake?"

Ever the opportunist, Aquarius stepped forwards. "I believe, sir, that I have just the solution to our problem. I call him Ice."

"Very well," the Brain said. "Glimmer, Shimmer, Simmer; you three go with Aquarius and keep and eye on him. Aquarius, tread lightly. You manipulated Elephant Man into disobeying orders. I do not appreciate my subordinates engaging in such open rivalry."

Aquarius blinked, somewhat taken aback, but did not dispute the Brain's words. "Very well, sir," he said.

"Go now, prepare this magical monstrosity you are so eager to try out, Aquarius. I will give you further orders when the time comes.**  
**

* * *

Tuesday morning was overcast and dreary, but rain refused to fall. Aquarius had spent most of the night getting things just right for his new fiend, and took some time for some inward gloating before contacting the Brain.

"I'm ready, my liege," he said into his communicator.

"Excellent," came the reply. Suddenly, a wide teleportation beam appeared nearby, and Elephant Man materialized on the rooftop. "Elephant Man is here to provide support in case your plan fails, Aquarius. Please do not confuse him as to my orders ever again, or you will join in his punishment."

Aquarius gulped. "Yessir," he said.

"Enact your plan. Now." And with that the communicator went dead.

Aquarius turned and removed a small metallic pendant from his belt, bearing an ancient arcane symbol. Around this time, Glimmer stepped forward. "So, Boss-A, why did you have us go around lighting all these torches with you weird-spiffed blue fire?"

Aquarius gave him a demeaning smile and did not answer his question, at least not verbally. Instead he spoke a single magic word and launched the pendant into the air, towards the centre of the circle of torches.

The Blue Flame lanced out from the torches, surrounding the wrought iron talisman and coalescing into something solid.. The moisture in the air sublimated onto the growing mass of icy energy, and gradually took on a humanoid shape.

Aquarius had created a literal abominable snowman.

"Impressive," Elephant Man said. "I seem to recall reading that once the mercenary known as Slade Wilson sent such a creature after the first group of Titans to protect this city."

The descendant of Madame Rouge nodded. "Indeed, though I believe that Slade's fire creature was far inferior to my own. The fire creature was destroyed with the natural gifts of rain, summoned by those two brats, Thunder and Lighting. But not my Ice creature."

Even as the Ice Monster stalked forward towards the town square, Shimmer approached Aquarius and watched has his demon began to freeze fleeing pedestrians and motorists.

"What do you mean by that?"

Aquarius smiled, admiring his own work. In his typical overly polite manner, he barely elaborated. "Let's just say I've taken our opponent's abilities well into account. _All_ of them."

* * *

Elsewhere…

Reality itself seemed to open up, and a boy who couldn't be any older than fifteen fell from the hole in reality… His violet eyes and dark-but-grayish skin, as well as the chakra in his forehead instantly betrayed his heritage.

Why had his mother sent him here? He'd wanted to meet Superman, not fall into some crummy city… Maybe this was Superman's city and he was just in a bad part of it. His dad had always told him about the bad parts of the cities of Earth… To avoid them, basically. Except that if a Supervillain attacked, taking the fight there might kill off some of the bad people. His mother had slapped his father for saying that. She slapped him a lot, right on the back of the head, where it hurt. Well, his dad didn't seem to mind.

That still didn't tell him how to find Superman.

"I'll figure it out," he said defiantly.

He charged into the graying morning sky, ready to greet the Planet Earth in person for the first time.


	9. You Know Who To Call

**Titans Tomorrow ****  
****Chapter Nine: …You Know Who To Call**

After hitting the bed, the first sensation Kevin felt was sunlight hitting his eyes. _Well that was a short night,_ he thought, barely feeling anymore rested than he had going to bed. As he set up, his super hearing picked up some footsteps in the hall, and he glanced at the door when it slid open to reveal Carrie, her Robin costume half hanging off of her from the waist up.

Her lips curled down slightly on both sides, indicating her frustration. "Kevin, trouble."

"Trouble? What kind of trouble?"

"The big kind. Get out of bed and get out here."

"Don't I have time to shower first?"

"NO!" With that, Carrie slammed the door shut and left him**  
**

* * *

Last to the party, Kevin found the rest of the fledgling team on the roof of the MasterCorp building, staring out at town square. "What's going on…" Kevin's question trialed off when he saw it. 

The massive Ice Monster terrorizing down town Jump City, that is.

"Holy spiff," he complained.

"It gets worse," Claire said.

Phaeism Elaborated. "Elephant Man, Aquarius, and some Light Brigade members were seen in the vicinity trailing the monster."

Kevin pulled on a pair of sunglasses. "Let's get this over with."

Robin, however, was not so gung ho. "It's a trap. They're baiting us into a confrontation with that thing and then planning on surprising us. We need to formulate a strategy."

"That preferably involves me smashing things," Superboy muttered.

"Not a bad idea, actually." Phaeism stroked his chin where he was getting started on five o'clock shadow before 9 AM. "Use your heat vision, get the creature occupied. Robin and the rest of us will figure out a way to get the jump on the Brotherhood goons."

"Sounds acceptable," Robin said. "Everyone ready?"

"Wait!" The new voice came from behind, and the team turned to see Daniel and Samantha. The speaker had been Samantha, holding up a key. "You can take our car if you'd like," she said, talking to everyone but Superboy.

Robin glanced at Phaeism, who in turn nodded. "Thank you, Mrs. Chase," she said, taking the key and pressing the unlock button. The car that they kept on the rooftop garage didn't respond. Instead, an entirely new car appeared, resembling the hybrid offspring of a DeLorean and a Jetta (but much larger than both put together), hovering just inches off the ground.

"A DZJ!" Phaeism blurted. "You've had a DZJ all this time and didn't tell me?"

"Actually," Daniel said, "I just bought it yesterday for you all."

Phaeism blinked, stunned.

"We don't have time for this!" Robin ran over to the car and hopped into the driver's seat. "Superboy, go!" she shouted. Kevin blasted off, a sonic boom forming not long after he'd left the roof.

The rest of the team filed into the car, and took off.

"Batmobile shmatmobile!" Carrie cried, blasting off towards their destination**  
**

* * *

Kevin's little mach-one speed burst got him to the Ice Monster fast enough, and he immediately went on the offensive, blasting straight into its chest and knocking it backwards. The fifty—foot monster staggered back and fell onto the roof the JC Convention Center, freezing the morning dew that rested on the roof solid. 

"You can dish it out, but can you take it, wench?" Superboy shouted at it.

The Ice Monster responded by hurling a frigid ball of magic glacial energy towards the super teen. Kevin blurred out of the way and blasted at the monster with his heat vision, which dug into the monster's 'flesh' sending up a small cloud of steam, and little else…

"That isn't good.." Kevin observed, suddenly extremely worried.

Turning up the power on his heat vision, Kevin unloaded a massive retaliatory beam, even as the Ice Creature began lobbing more ice blasts at him. The heat vision this time caused the creature to explode into a fountain of steam as the laser sheered him in half. It fell onto the ground in a puddle of ice and water, and Kevin landed beside it. "Well that was anticlimactic," he said…

Suddenly, the ice literally glowed with power and hovered into the air; the water on the rooftop flowed back up onto the frame of the monster and froze again—even some of the steam reattached itself to his foe…

"Aw spiff," Kevin winced.

In the very next split second, the Ice Monster punched Kevin so hard he was sent careening into a distant building, slamming into the wall and falling unconscious.

* * *

"Holy cow!" exclaimed Phaeism as Superboy went flying away from the battle.  
This drew some strange looks from the girls. 

"It's an expression of amazement from the 20th century," he explained. "Kind of like what 'holy Yao' would be to us."

"Then why did you not just say 'holy Yao'?" Claire asked pointedly. "It's just one letter difference."

Phaeism unbuttoned his coat and pointed to his shirt that read _History Freak_; Claire just rolled her eyes and focused on what was going on. The car was currently invisible, but they couldn't stay invisible if they went any lower…

"You see anything?" asked Robin…

"Nope."

"Nada."

"Wait!" Claire pointed towards a moving speck on the roof of a building near the Convention Centre… it looked like a person, except for the fact it was the size of a small car.

"Elephant Man," Robin confirmed. "I don't see the Zodiac dork anywhere though…"

"But I do see the Light Brigade." Claire's voice was full of obvious anger.

"Phae." Robin became deadly serious. "I'm assuming you can drive."

"Well, yeah," he said… "Why…"

"Take the wheel. I'm going to HALO down there and distract Elephant Man for a bit. You take Claire to find Superboy, and then come help me."

"You're the leader…" Phaeism said with a shrug… "I think."

Dissipating into a cloud of fog, Phaeism leaked into the front seat even as Robin opened the door, letting a burst of frigid morning air into the vehicle. Then she vanished out the window, her foot thudding on the roof of the car before plummeting down below.

* * *

The young boy that looked like his mother stepped out of a narrow passage and onto a balcony above town square… And he gasped, for there were heroes there, fighting a couple of giants… One of them was an ice giant, he realized… 

"I should help them!" His mother would want him to… And maybe he could find Superman in the process.

The boy leapt from the perch and started arching his way down towards the fight… He just hoped he didn't get himself killed.

* * *

Superboy came to at the sound of foot falls nearby, and fine tuned his hearing senses to pinpoint where it was coming from. Kevin blasted up through the strata of buildings and turned his laser eyes toward whoever was making the foot falls… 

And discovered Aquarius.

"Hello, Kryptonian," the descendant of Madam Rouge said. "I made sure this ice creature was especially effective against you. Your heat vision cannot break the magic bonds I've weaved into the ice. No heat produced by mere mortals can. Isn't it beautiful?"

"You're sick, dude," Kevin said, throwing a powerful punch into Aquarius' stomach, not enough to kill a man, but enough to make wish he was dead. Unfortunately, the punch just sank into his chest.

"I had to use magic, but it does loosen me up a bit," Aquarius said, then pulled both hands out from behind his back, revealing two ornate gauntlets, crackling with magical energy. "Time to redeem myself."

Aquarius hit Superboy with his left, then his right, staggering the teen hero backwards before Kevin could react. When he did, Kevin blocked with his forearm and slammed his fist into Aquarius face. The villain absorbed the blow and upped the magic force of the gauntlets, slamming Superboy across the rooftop and into a pile of garbage that hadn't been collected. Kevin leapt to his feet, and threw two of the bags at Aquarius, trying to distract him long enough to get close. But the bags burned up from blasts of Aquarius gauntlets, and Superboy was left wide open..

Fortunately, he was much faster than the villain, and whirled downward turning upside down and sweeping Aquarius' leg out from underneath him. Aquarius landed on his back side and rolled away from Superboy, again charging his gauntlets' power and blasting him a powerful beam of generic magic energy.

"I know what hurts you, Kryptonian. Aside from Kryptonite and a red sun, you are just as vulnerable to magic as the next man." Aquarius took some grim satisfaction as Superboy fell back under the stream of magic energy, writing in agony…

"What do you have to say now, child," Aquarius asked, stepping forward.

"The magic! It burns! It burns!" moaned Kevin…

Then he set up, smirking wickedly. "Actually… it tickles."

Not two feet from Aquarius, Superboy let out a burst of arctic breath—the least developed of his powers. Retreating from the icy assault, Aquarius leapt back, barely able to move his extremities… "How! This isn't possible! You should be weakened beyond measure!"

Kevin shook his head. "Idiot. What part of 'I'm the grandson of Superman _and_ Zeus do you not understand?"

One powerful punch later, Aquarius was in the bay just as Elephant Man had been a day earlier.

More footfalls behind him caused Kevin to jerk around and aim his laser eyes… this time at Claire…

"Oh, gosh, cyborg-babe… Almost blasted you."

Claire glared at him. "My name ain't 'cyborg babe'," she said emphatically.

"I know, I know, Claire, right?" Superboy waited for her confirmation. "Good, so what's your code name. I'd go with Arms or something…"

"No code name. Just Claire," the young woman's tone of voice left no room for argument.

"Okay, well, if it makes you happy. I'd get that arm turned into a gun again if I were you. Looks like we have a huge fight on our hand."

* * *

Robin's memory fabric cape allowed her to glide down towards the rooftop where Elephant Man and the trio of Light Brigadiers were stationed. She immediately lunged towards the Light Brigade, blasting both Shimmer and Simmer away and onto the sloped portion of the rooftop with her force gauntlets. Both criminals went sailing backwards and rolled down the side of the building uncontrollably. Robin then turned and went after Glimmer, crescent-kicking him in the head before smashing a backfist into his solar plexus. Glimmer staggered back with a sharp gasp of pain, and Robin dived over his head and threw two explosive disks behind her at Elephant Man, whose thundering footsteps had cued Robin to his coming attack. 

The disks staggered the mammoth, but didn't do any damage to him, So Robin dived out of the way and used the last bit of energy in her force gauntlets to send the brute flying down the side of the building just like Simmer and Shimmer. The brute's massive weight allowed him to pick up enough speed that he nearly rolled on past the other two as the fell from the bottom of the angled surface to the ledge below.

Robin, knowing that they'd be back and yet they weren't the biggest threat, turned her attention to the coming Ice Monster. It had apparently noticed its masters' plight and decided to come after Robin. She ran towards it, mostly to put distance between herself and the giant elephant-themed villain she'd just infuriated.

As she arrived, the Ice Monster hurled a huge ball of ice energy—a flagrant oxymoron that was literally hurting her brain—at Robin. She leapt into the air and flipped sideways away from it with a burst from her jet boots. Then she turned and flung a duo of thermal birdarangs at it; they slammed into the side of the beast and caused ice and water and steam to erupt as the injected the beast with a bunch of heat..

But all three states of matter just reattached to the Ice Monster at his legs, the material shifting then to fill the holes Robin had made in its armor.

"Just great," she muttered. "How do you stop something like this…"

Though the question had been rhetorical, the green cloud of fog that Robin had nearly backed into coalesced into a teenager and answered her. "A giant microwave," Phaeism suggested unhelpfully, with a tinge of sarcasm in his voice.

"Yeah, I'll get back to you on that one."

"Well, Daniel does have a EM emitter back at the building…"

"Something tells me this isn't just science," Robin said. "It…" she trailed off as she had to dodge another ice attack. "It's enhanced by magic somehow. Aquarius' work, probably."

"_Magic_ ice?" Phaeism asked, dodging an attack. "I suck against normal ice!"

Robin dived out of the way of another attack, but not fast enough, and the ball of ice energy slammed into her leg and coated it in an inch-thick layer of ice. "Spiffing!" she blurted, struggling to get free.

Phaeism darted over and began to try and help her up, but was driven away when another ice attack nearly slammed into his head…

The Ice Monster finally arrived and lurched over, the teens, raising a hand preparing to bury them both in an icy tomb… The ice lanced down at them… But the tomb never came. A burst of photons lanced out and struck the ice attack, shattering it.

Superboy, Claire literally kneeling on his back, swooped in through the air, and both began firing, peppering the Ice Monster with eye beams and photon bursts, driving Ice crazy. Kevin slowed down as he passed Robin and Phaeism again, dropping off the cyborg and turning around, then, with a sudden burst of speed, shoulder ramming the Ice Monster. The creature blasted backwards and staggered off the edge of the massive building the fight was taking place on, sliding down the sloped surface…

"What building is this?" Claire suddenly asked, as if a stray memory was nagging at her.

"Heck if I know," Kevin said dismissively, running over to check on Robin. "Is the Bat-Chick okay?" he asked Phaeism, as if Robin weren't even there.

"I'm fine," Robin answered for herself. "Just melt this ice on my leg before the monster shows back up…

Claire knelt down and aimed her photon canon at Carrie's leg. "Hold still."

"What the spiff are you--?" Robin blurted. Claire ignored her and fired, causing the ice on her leg to partially explode into chunks of steam and ice. Thankful the attack hadn't burned a hole in her leg—or worse, through the very expensive armor—Robin stood up and nodded a silent thanks to Claire.

"If it makes you feel any better," said the young woman, "I ain't had this much fun since my third birthday when Barney showed up."

Phaeism smiled. "Looks like we already have an addict, kids."

"Guys, problem." Robin pointed towards the edge of the building. There was nothing there.

"What?" Superboy asked.

"We kind of need to finish that thing off before it freezes anyone else."

"Oh, right…" All the teens sweatdropped.

Phaeism shook his head though. "How do we stop something made of magic ice?"

Robin thought a moment and shrugged. "Magic fire?"

* * *

He'd thought he'd seen Superman! He'd thought he was so close. He'd ran up the side of the building and everything, and he'd gotten to the roof, and there he'd been, all flying and stuff… 

But it wasn't Superman! It was Superman's clone's son! It was the spoilt little boy that mom and dad had always called 'the pretender'… Why they'd called him that, the child didn't know…

The kid made his way to edge of the roof and looked down at the lower roof. The woman with metal arms had just shot off the ice on the Robin Girl's legs, and then they'd started talking, and one of them said something that made all the others have an enormous drop of sweat appear on their heads. He'd seen his mom make it happen to his dad hundreds of times, but he'd never figured out how it worked.

Suddenly, he heard something nearby and turned putting up a defensive stance. The guy he saw when he did so was a young guy, older than him, but not by much, dressed in chains and spikes. His skin was glowing like a light bulb, too.

"Who are you…?" the child asked.

"The name's Glimmer."

"What do you want…?"

"What are you doing up here, kid?" Glimmer demanded.

"I want to find Superman, that's what my mom sent me to earth for!" responded the kid. "Dad said there was something else I had to do, but he didn't say what."

This answer really made this Glimmer smirk. He hated it when people smirked. "What's so funny, Glimmer?"

"You really are a child," he said. "Still living with your mom and dad."

"I bet you'd be too if you'd dress halfway decent."

Glimmer just spat on the rooftop, and leaned forward. The kid leaned forward too, to see what Glimmer was going to do, and they both gradually got closer and closer to each others' faces till they were just an inch away from their eyeballs touching, both glaring daggers.

Sweat ran down the kid's face, past his chakra, and onto his lip, where he tasted the salt.

Glimmer exhaled, his breath smelling like cigar smoke…

The child blinked...

"**_BOO!_**" Glimmer yelled, suddenly, loudly.

The kid screamed as loud as his lungs would allow, and leaped into the air… And right off the top of the building…

* * *

As soon as they all heard the scream, all the group immediately began looking around, scanning for what could have shouted… But only Superboy had the benefit of super hearing, and when he had processed the information, his head immediately jerked up… 

"What, Kevin?" Robin squinted, scanning the sky.

"It's a kid falling from the sky!" he shouted.

"Then go catch him, idiot!" Phaeism barked.

"Um, right, I was gonna…" Superboy said, blasting off.. He added en route: "…see if he could fly first…"

Superboy caught the kid and slowed down as he landed, gently dropping him in the middle of the circle of teens. The kid's purple hair fell over his face as he stood upright, and contrary to what seemed naturaly, everywhere the shadow of his hair hit turned totally black, everywhere except his eyes.

"Um… hi there," the boy said sheepishly. "Are you guys the Teen Titans?"

Robin smiled. "We might be."

"Okay, well… I'm looking for Superman."

Robin chuckled. "You're on the wrong coast for that. Superman lives in Metropolis."

"Well where is this?"

"This is Jump City," Phaeism said. "We're in California. Metropolis is in Delaware."

"Oh…"

"You're cute kid," Claire said, though she said it in a way that indicated 'cute' wasn't a compliment in her mind. "What's your name?"

"Well, I go by Nick, Nick Jefferson. But my hero name is Ignis!"

"Ignis?" Phaeism said. "Latin for fire… Why exactly is that your hero name, Nicholas?"

"No, not Nicholas—my full name is Phoenix but my parents just call me Nick."

"Your parents… I take it one of them is Raven," Robin said. "Judging by the blue cloak, navy unitard, and hair that defies everything we know about the physics of light.

"That's right! My mom is Raven—Rachel Roth-Jefferson. And my dad was Yin, the rubber Titan!"

"Yin?" Robin asked. "Never heard of him."

Phaeism shrugged. "I don't know much about him, other than his real name was Davis Jefferson and he joined the Titans in 2008, first part time and then full time. I didn't even know his power until now."

"Hey!" Ignis blurted. "My dad helped save the world!"

"Don't doubt it, kid," Superboy said. "But why would you get dropped off here if Raven wanted you to go meet Superman?"

"Unless she meant Superboy…" Robin mused.

"No way…" Ignis looked at Superboy. "My dad said not to hang around with you. He said you were a 'corrupting influence' and you were to be avoided unless doing so would put myself or someone else in danger."

Claire blinked. "This Yin must be a smart man."

"Not funny," Kevin muttered.

Suddenly, a loud roar behind them drew all the teens' attention to the fact that the Ice Monster had recovered. All of them turned. Robin glanced down at Ignis. "Um, your name is Latin for fire for a good reason, I hope."

"You bet it is…" Ignis darted out in front of the Titans, and then stepped into a deep _seiuchin_ fighting stance. His arms moved out, then around, and finally cupped at his waist on the right side of his body.

"How is tai-chi going to help us?" Superboy asked…

The Ice Monster rose to his full height, now a lot skinner than before, and charged directly at the five teens. And at that point, Ignis thrust both hands forward, shouting a loud _KIYAH_ as he did… And a beam of fire exploded from his hands, arcing out and slamming into Ice's chest. The monster cried out in pain, and went sailing backwards off the building again.

This time, the ice that had been melted off of him didn't reform.

Magic ice, meet magic fire.

"Holy Yao!" Superboy blurted.

"Flawless Victory," Ignis said with a smirk, turning to give the other four a victory sign.

Robin stepped forward, and handed Ignis a small silver-and black device with a white 'T' emblazoned on it. "Nick… If it's okay with your parents, I'd love to have you join us."

Ignis just facevaulted. "You're kidding me! You want _me_ to join the _Titans_!"

"Something like that."

Ignis almost fainted. Almost, because before he had a chance to, four teleportation beams appeared behind the other Titans and all of them turned around. Robin pulled out her two Escrima sticks, Phaeism dissipated his legs into a gas and hovered up above them. Superboy pulled down his shades and went slightly airborne as well. Claire readied her gun-arm for another workout…

The beam deposited Elephant Man, Simmer, Shimmer, and Aquarius on the roof directly behind the Titans. Simmer and Shimmer held out their hands in a gesture that seemed strange, until Glimmer fell from above and landed in them like a perfect cheerleader pyramid, before landing and assuming his own battle position.

Phaeism formed his left arm into a hammer. "Carrie," he whispered. "I think you know what to say."

She smirked. Why not?

**_"TITANS, GO!"_**

* * *

**Titans: Tomorrow – ACT ONE **

**-Conceived and written by-  
**

**Benjamin "Chaltab" English**

**Based on Characters owned by**

**DC Comics, Warner Bros Animation, and Nickelodeon**

**-Starring- **

**Jessica Di Cicco as Robin ****  
****David Kaufman as Phaeism/Daniel Chase ****  
****Jason Marsden as Superboy ****  
****T'Keyah Keymah as Claire ****  
****Zach Tyler as Ignis ****  
****Tom Kenny as Spikey Joey/Bruno/Clyde/Tony ****  
****Alex Fernandez as Aquarius ****  
****Kevin Kline as Shimmer/Simmer/Glimmer ****  
****Glen Shadix as The Brain/Elephant Man ****  
****Phil Lammar as President John Stewart ****  
****Grey Delisle as Samantha Chase **

**and **

**Khary Peyton as Cyborg**


	10. New Blue Zinthos

**Titans: Tomorrow ****  
****Chapter Ten: New Blue Zinthos**

_My name is Phoenix "Nick" Jefferson, and I'm new to this planet. Well, not completely. I mean my parents let me watch TV from Earth and seven other dimensions back at our home in the other-dimensional Fate Tower. And trust me, with that many channels, you can bet they made good use of the V-Chip. So I know a lot about Earth, but there's also a lot I don't know. _

_But one thing I do know—I always wanted to be like Superman. And that's why I came to Earth to meet him. Unfortunately, it seems my parents missed Metropolis and dropped me in their old stomping grounds, Jump City. _

_And that's how this all got started, really. I may be the last to the party, but the party didn't really start till I got there, and that was really thanks to my mom and dad. They're like living legends to the rest of these new Titans. To me, though, they're just my family. It feels weird, them hanging off every word they say. But they teach me things, and that means a lot to me. I'm learning to be like Superman from them. But first, I had to get started. And this is how it happened. _

_My name is Phoenix Jefferson. They call me Ignis, and this is my story._

* * *

Robin charged forward first, leaping over Elephant Man with her jet boots and dodging a magic blast from Aquarius. Then she slammed a boot into Shimmer's face, sending the criminal sprawling on his back against the roof top. Robin immediately turned and began hammering Glimmer in the stomach with a bunch of powerful punches. Simmer blasted her in the back with a beam of light energy from his finger, but it wasn't powerful enough to disable the heroine. Simmer punched at Robin, but she deflected it and pulled his arm into a joint lock, then transitioned into a judo toss that send Simmer landing on top of Glimmer.

Phaeism and Superboy both went after Elephant Man, Superboy taking the direct approach by slamming his shoulder into the mutant's solar plexus (or at least where he expected it to be assuming the creature was more man than elephant.) Phaeism, on the other hand, took a more indirect approach, bursting into gas and forming several tendrils of the cloud into hooks that dug into Elephant Man's flesh and caused the brute no small amount of pain.

Superboy waited for Phaeism to cause enough pain to draw a cry—well, more like a roar—from the mammoth and then delivered a crushing kick to Elephant Man's open lower jaw. Several ivory teeth clattered to the roof of the building, and Elephant Man fell on top of them.

Superboy smirked. "Nobody will call me a pretender after today."

"Ignis' dad still might," Phaeism said, now just a floating torso. His body coalesced back into a teenager.

"Bite me, Alex." Kevin turned and used his laser vision to slice Elephant Man's ivory tusks off.

Claire and Ignis both went after Aquarius, dodging a flurry of magic ice blasts from his twin magic gauntlets. Claire nodded as she went high, slamming a fist into Aquarius' face, even as Ignis went low, shooting a burst of fire into Aquarius knee caps.

Aquarius fell to the ground, unable to stand with his knees set aflame… And then Claire stomped his rubbery head so hard the shape shifting criminal fell unconscious. "Game, set, match, huh?" Claire said with a smirk, glancing at Robin.

The Teen Wonder walked over and the five heroes regrouped. "That was almost two easy…." Robin worried aloud.

"Famous last words," Kevin said. "Anytime something seems too easy, it usually is."

As if on cue, all the incapacitated Brotherhood of Evil members suddenly vanished into the white light of a teleportation beam. And to top it off, the building shook violently, as if suddenly struck by a wrecking ball. And then it happened again, harder, causing Robin and Ignis to lose their footing and fall over.

"This can't be good," Claire said, helping Robin up. "What exactly is this building we're on?"

Superboy shrugged. "I'll go check." He blasted off in a blur of blue and black, and returned just as quickly. "I'm not sure if this is relevant, but this is a cryogenics facility. They make those freeze-dried ice cream and stuff that astronauts eat on the trips to Saturn."

"Is it blowing up?" Phaeism asked. "I'm not sure why a cryogenics facility would be blowing up, but I don't particularly care to find out."

The Titans began to run towards the edge of the roof to escape, when suddenly, Robin stopped dead in her tracks. "Wait a minute. This is a cryogenics facility… What did Raven's kid just blast off the roof?"

"A giant… ice monster." Superboy said. Then he facevaulted when he realized what Robin was getting at. "You don't think…?"

The Titans turned and ran towards the section of the roof where Ignis had blasted the Ice Monster—when a massive icy hand slammed down onto the rooftop right in front of them. "Oh spiff!" Ignis cried, backpedaling into Clair.

The air cooled instantly as a second massive frosty hand slammed down onto the roof of the building, and the Ice Monster pulled itself up into full view of the Titans. Robin craned her neck all the way up and could barely make out the creature's head. "Titans… RUN!" she cried.

All the teens turned and took off in the other direction, but it immediately became apparent they weren't going to get away that easily—because the fastest of them, Superboy, was immediately blasted out of the air by an enormous burst of ice energy, frozen solid by the time he landed, pieces of his boots and shirt literally chipping off as he hit the hard metal roof.

"Kevin!" Alex gritted his teeth as he ran over to the frozen superhero. He tried to turn Kevin upright to see if he could get him to breath, but the Kryptonian's body was so cold Alex's hand recoiled reflexively as he touched it, and found himself unable to break it down into a gas for seconds afterward. "Holy Yao—we're spiffed..."

Robin snarled something unintelligible and pulled out an explosive disk, throwing it at the Ice Demon with as much strength as she could muster; the explosion made a small divot in the Ice Demon's abdomen, but it quickly repaired itself.

Robin glanced at Ignis. "You have any more of that magic fire?"

"I'll try!" Ignis ran forward, stepping backwards into a deep fighting stance again, and letting loose another burst of flame. But this time it was so much smaller than the Ice Monster that an explosion of steam from the creature's skin was the only visible reaction…

Ignis took a step back and fired again, blasting away chunk after chunk, but quickly exhausting himself. "FIRE BLASTER BALL!" he cried, creating a sphere of flaming death above his head, then hurling it at the Ice Demon…

But even that only managed to expose the monster's innards—innards that were quickly covered by another layer of ice…

And Robin could see Ignis wouldn't hold out much longer; he was breathing hard and drenched in sweat. "This isn't working," she told him.

"Could have… fooled… me…" Ignis said between breaths. He fell to his knees, continuing the hard breathing. "Sorry… Not used to this… yet…"

The Ice Monster stalked a bit closer, exhaling a powerful burst of ice energy at the thing that had attacked it…

When suddenly a twin pair of red lasers slammed into the ice and turned it into steam. Heads craned to see Superboy, still frozen below the armpits, hovering above the rest of the group. "Geez-Louise, I've never felt this cold in my life. I've never felt any cold in my life period! I never knew cold was this spiffing painful." Shivers wracked the teen's body, but he was also vibrating his atoms fast enough that the ice was melting fairly quickly…

"I'd ask if you were strong enough to walk," Robin said, "but with you're legs frozen it's a moot point."

"Funny." Superboy slammed his body into the ground as hard as he could, trying to break the ice that remained, but only parts of it fell off. "I guess I'll just have to wait.

The Ice Demon was now hovering over the Titans, and Superboy was doing what he could with his heat vision to keep it busy, but it was a losing battle. "Ignis!" Claire shouted. "Do something, call your mom if you have to!"

"I don't know how… But.."

"But what?" Robin snapped, trying to help Kevin out with the little ammo she had left. "Spit it out..."

"My mom told me I could say these magic words in an emergency, but only in an emergency… Is this an…"

"YES, THIS IS AN EMERGENCY!" Robin shouted over the Ice Monster's loud roar and the sound of Kevin's eyebeams.

"Are you sure?"

"YES!"

Ignis took a step back. "Okay then."

He closed his eyes, and sat down on the roof, and then, he began chanting. "Azarath… Metrion… Zinthos…. Azarath. Metrion. Zinthos. Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos. Azarath Metrion Zinthos…"

The Titans were forced to back up as an aura of fire erupted around Ignis, and he hovered off the ground, still in the sitting position.. "Azarath Metrion Zinthos Azarath Metrion Zinthos…"

A pillar of fire shot straight up, and Ignis threw his head back, his eyes opening, now glowing pure white. His face was like a feral animal. "Azarath Metrion Zinthos Azarathmetrionzinthos…"

"DO IT NOW!" Superboy shouted, throwing himself at the ground as he was overwhelmed, his eyebeams vanishing and the Ice Monster's attack passing cementers above him…

"AzarathMetrionZinthos... **_AZARATH METRION ZINTHOS!_**"

Ignis final cry caused energy to explode off of him in all directions, and the Titans gasped as his Soul Self poured out of his body; but unlike Raven's, which was dark energy shaped like a raven, the Soul Self that came from Ignis was an enormous flaming bird, a searing heat pouring off of it as fire spewed from its mouth… And then it opened its wings, filling the sky around them with fire. Motorists and pedestrians fled, the gust of heat melting plastic for miles around the city.

The Ice Demon didn't stand a chance. It was instantly engulfed as Ignis' soul self slammed into it; the water from which it was composed began simmering off the rooftop as steam or running down into the streets below.

"Now I see why they named him Phoenix," Alex said, his face a mask of awe..

But Ignis' soul self was smaller now, the flames weaker, and it frantically turned and headed back towards his body, slamming into it and knocking it into Claire's arms, the flames flowing into Ignis mouth. His eye snapped back to normal. "That was a rush," he said, before promptly falling unconscious**.  
**

* * *

Hours later, Superboy and the rest of the new generation of Titans gathered in a meeting room at Master Tower, the same room where Kevin and Max Leech had reached their agreement. "So, it's official then?" Robin said, rubbing her aching temples. "We're going to call ourselves the Teen Titans or some variation thereof."

"I don't see why not," Phaeism said. "How many teams have called themselves the Doom Patrol? Or the Suicide Squad?"

"Um, the Suicide Squad were villains," Claire said. "Not a good example."

"No, no it wasn't." Phaeism looked across to the cyborg-armed lady. "Your thoughts on the subject."

"I really don't care," she said. "As long as we don't call ourselves something stupid like the Spiff-You Squad."

"Do you think the kid is gonna join us?" Kevin asked with a slight grimace. "There's no denying he's useful in a fight—and considering the Brotherhood got away, there's no doubt going to be another big fight—but…"

"He's green," Phaeism said, obviously aware of the irony of that statement coming from him. "And he doesn't seem particularly fond of you."

Superboy shrugged. "Yeah, yeah, he'll warm up to me. I'm a famous person after all."

"Somehow I doubt that will really matter to him," Robin said. "If what I've heard about Raven and Yin is correct, they moved off this plane into a pocket dimension about fifteen years ago, right around the time Raven would have become the new Dr. Fate—"

"And right around the time the kid would have been born," Claire added. "Which means he's been raised without any knowledge of Earth and it's ways. His only influence is his dad, and…"

Claire trailed off, and Phaeism looked at her concernedly. "And what?"

"You know a lot about old history, but you don't know a lot about turn of the century heroics," Claire said. "But living in the Undercity, I learned a lot about how great this town used to be. But they always said Yin was a bit of a hardliner—a merciless right wing propaganda machine."

"Well considering the down and out sources, they may have exaggerated a bit," Superboy said. "I mean, would you trust the history books or a smelly hobo from the Undercity?"

Claire glared at this dismissal, but said nothing. "Look, I'm not here to debate credibly, I'm just saying that Superboy's lifestyle isn't exactly the model of generosity and selflessness. Not saying mine is, just that Superboy publicly performed heroics for money. And most heroes are going to look down on that—I sort of look down on that—Yin is just less forgiving, or so my 'smelly hobo' sources tell me." Claire's tone dropped a few degrees Celsius upon repeating Superboy's epithet.

Suddenly, a loud buzzing noise filled the nearby living room, and light from under the door began pouring into the conference room. All the Titans ran out there, only to be blinded by pulsating sphere of energy, that receded instantly into the shape of an ankh…

From which emerged none other than Raven, a sardonic grin on her face that didn't match the warmth in her eyes. "Maybe you should ask him yourself."

Raven motioned to the portal, from which another figure stepped, this one taller, with a black and white costume and spiky blond hair.

The ankh portal vanished, giving the Titans their first good look at the two. "Dr. Fate…" Robin gasped. "It's an honor to meet you."

"I'm sure it is," Raven said, still smirking. She stepped forward, her long dress dragging the floor slightly. "Where is my son?"

"He's in the back room," Phaeism volunteered. "My caretakers Daniel Chase and his wife Samantha are with him. They say they see nothing wrong, he just needs rest."

"He needs lots of rest," Dr. Fate confirmed, adjusting the headdress that had once been the Helm of Nabu until an accident had shattered most of it. "That's the first time he's ever had to use his soul self, and I need to discuss some things with him."

Raven hovered above the ground and took off down the hallway, leaving the Titans with Yin. His costume was different than the one in the file photos Kevin had seen, but not entirely dissimilar. Now, though, instead of a symbol for simply Yin, there was a full Yin-Yang symbol on the breast. Yin seemed to smile at his wife as she flew down the hallway, and then turned to the Titans. "Please excuse Raven for being rude, she's not exactly in the best of moods."

"Is that so?" Phaeism said, suddenly popping up between Yin and the hallway. "In any case, I'm a historian of sorts, as a hobby, and I wanted to ask you a few questions about your early days as a Titan. Do you mind?"

"Yes."

"Okay, then, first question. How did you join the—wait, did you say that you did mind?"

"Yes," confirmed Yin. "I don't want to answer any questions until after I've checked on my son. Now please excuse me." He quickly brushed Phaeism aside and followed Dr. Fate down the hall.

"Smooth," Claire commented. "Real smooth."

Phaeism sweatdropped, but was not deterred. "I'll just talk later, assuming that Daniel and Samantha do the predictable thing and invite them to stay for dinner."

Kevin frowned. "I'd like to give the guy a piece of my mind, calling me a corrupting influence. Bah. Spiffing old people think they spiffing know spiffing everything."

"Speaking of old," Robin said, "why do those two still look thirty? They've got to be pushing sixty."

"One of the things I plan to ask in my interview," Phaeism said. He quickly jotted something down on his notepad. "As of two seconds ago."

* * *

"Hey, Nick…" The soft words helped ease the exhausted teenager back to consciousness… "How are you feeling, kid?"

Ignis pulled himself up and forced his heavy eyelids to open, and immediately realized one thing—he had no idea where he was. The room was big, with a rounded far wall and windows to match. But he didn't recognize any of it…

"Dad?" he whispered.

"I'm right here," came a voice to his left.

Ignis turned to see not only his father, but his mother as well. "You gave us a bit of a scare," Raven said. "We expected you to have a run in with the new kids who want to be the Titans. But we didn't expect you to have to use the Soul Self so early."

"Soul Self?" Phoenix asked.

"It's the source of you powers, Nick," Yin said with a smile. "Comes from your mom's side of the family."

"You mean… the T-word?"

Raven nodded somberly. "But Trigon is gone, dear. Your power is not evil, it just is. Evil is in the intent, and you used it for something good today. But in the process, you did cause a lot of damage to the city."

"Oh no… Am I going to go to jail?" Nick shuddered. "I don't think I could handle prison as tired as I am right now. I heard President Stewart wants to take all the TVs out of prisons. I'd get bored. You know I would."

"That's not something you have to worry about," Yin said. "It's okay. Nobody was hurt, and there is a team of lawyers that handles the damage. But just remember what you caused, okay? So you don't repeat the mistake. Having power is no excuse to abuse it."

"I don't think I could abuse this power!" Ignis laughed. "There's no way. I'd just pass out any time I tried."

"You seem to be in good spirits," a new voice said. "Ignis?"

"Hm?" Nick turned to the other side of the bed to see a woman he hadn't noticed before, and someone he didn't recognize. Behind her stood a man he also didn't recognize, but seemed somehow familiar. "Who… are you guys?"

"Nick, don't be rude," Raven scolded.

The woman smiled kindly, though. "It's okay. My name is Samantha Chase, and this is my husband Daniel." She motioned to the man. "We are sort of like Phaeism's parents, and this is our house. The rest of the kids brought you here after you passed out."

"It's quite an impressive power you have," Daniel Chase said. Ignis thought he had a funny smirk, like something that was really hilarious, but only to himself…. Daniel reached out a hand and greeted Ignis by his nickname Nick. "Nice to meet you."

"Nice to meet you too…"

Despite the anxiety and despite how tired he was, Ignis smiled. He was not sure of what was going on. But he knew, somehow, maybe because of his mother's blood in his veins, that it was something good. Maybe something that would save the world someday. Only time would tell, though…

* * *

"So you fought vampires?" Phaeism gasped.

"Yup," Raven said.

"And the Titans of Myth?" Superboy's eyes lit up.

"Indeed," Yin confirmed. "Don't tell me you know nothing about the Near Apocalypse of 09."

"I thought that was started by one of Batman's enemies," Robin said. "Some Ghoulish guy."

"Yes," Raven said, "but the Titans of Myth, including Kevin's great grandfather Cronus, were pawns in his scheme."

Ignis stuffed his mouth full of pork rinds and said something to the gist of how Raven and the other Titans had saved the world from Trigon over five times. Raven dismissed that as ridiculous and said it was less than half that.

Soon, though, the mood got a bit more somber as the sun began to set. Raven—no, Dr. Fate—stepped forward, and stood by her son. But she spoke to the whole room. "The Chases helped the Titans out in the past," she said, "and now they've offered to let all of you stay in their home, at least until you can find a more permanent headquarters."

"Thank them for it one at a time to let them know you mean it." Yin laughed.

"If you five are really serious about this—especially you, son—then I'm not going to stop you, and I'm not going to give you a lecture. You know the risks and rewards of the job. It's going to get harder than you can probably imagine on some occasions. And the adults won't always be there to bail you out."

Then, with a sad smile, Raven turned to her son. "You wanted to meet Superman, but right now his grandson will have to suffice. Is that okay?"

"I can meet Superman any time," Ignis said. "But being a founding member of the Teen Titans? That's something only ten people in the history of people can say."

Robin shook her head. "Fifteen people," she corrected. "If everyone is okay with this."

One by one, the five teenagers all nodded, affirming their commitment to the new team. It was finally official. And none of them could truly believe it.

* * *

_My name is Carrie Kelly. I'm Robin. _

_My name is Alexander Lambert. I'm Phaeism. _

_My name is Claire Brichton. Or just Claire. _

_My name is Kevin Kent. I'm Superboy. _

_My name is Phoenix Jefferson. They call me Ignis. _

_We're the Teen Titans. And this is our story._


	11. Dark Legacy

**Titans Tomorrow**

**Part Eleven: Dark Legacy**

_Masters Tower, 1700 Broadside, Jump City, California_

_Home of Master's Corporation, Daniel Chase and current home of the New Teen Titans:_

_Ignis, with the power to generate and manipulate magic fire._

_Claire, with two mechanical arms that conceal deadly proton cannons._

_Phaeism, with the power to transmute the state of any organic thing he touches._

_Superboy, with all the powers of his biological grandfathers, Superman and Zeus_

_And Robin, leader of the team and scion of the Batman of Gotham City_

* * *

The excitement in Ignis' voice was painfully tangible as he leaned forward, elaborating on his long-winded movie explanation to the mostly-apathetic Claire. She just rolled her eyes and continued reading a magazine article about the latest in prosthetic limb maintenance.

"And then," Ignis continued, "The guy starts to get arrested, and screams out SOYLENT GREEN IS—"

"People," Claire interrupted. "That movie is old as sin, man."

"I thought you said you hadn't seen it," Ignis leaned back in the easy chair—one of many that the Chases had allotted the newly formed Teen Titans as long as they were headquartered in MasterCorp Tower. It was blue, which made Ignis rather happy. He liked blue.

"I haven't." Claire pulled her magazine down. "And I honestly couldn't tell you where I first heard that quote. It's something that everyone just knows. Like when you first heard that George Washington Carver was the first president of the United States."

Ignis blinked. "You mean George Washington."

"Yeah, whoever," Claire muttered. "Then you have John Adams, Abe Lincoln, FDR, Ronald Reagan, JFK—all those dead white guys. It's not something you ever remember where you first heard it. You just know it."

Ignis shook his head and walked across the room, then back to the chair, standing in front of it and leaning over his conversationally-challenged companion. "I doubt movie spoilers are as common of knowledge as who the first president was."

"You've obviously never used the Internet." Claire gave him a wry smirk, but then her expression changed when she looked at Ignis.

"I've heard about the Internet."

"Spiff, you really haven't used it?" Claire shook her head in a way that made Ignis feel very inadequate inside his brain, and he slumped back down into the comfort of the blue easy chair.

"I would have if mom had bought me a computer."

Claire said nothing, merely wetting her mechanical fingers with her tongue and turning the page of her periodical.

Ignis sat back and turned the chair a few degrees to the left, then picked up a remote and turned on the television, bringing up a local news channel.

A feed about the canisters of DC#38 nerve agent that had been smuggled into the country was suddenly cut off by a breaking news story, a bright blue computer generated news-head replacing the live anchor discussing the ramifications of the boarder-security blunder.

The words URGENT NEWS BULLITEN flashed across the screen.

_This just in_, said the digital anchor. _We're receiving reports from downtown Jump City that a large unidentified mutant creature is terrorizing people near the Haney Park district. All civilians are advised to steer clear of this area, effective immediately._

"Oh crap." Ignis got to his feet, and glanced back at Claire. She too had heard the report, and threw her magazine down on the nearby coffee table.

"Nick, go get Robin and the boys, I'll bring the T-Car down to this floor. Hurry!"

Ignis nodded. "I suppose 'Titans GO!" would be too unoriginal."

Claire gave an apathetic shrug. "If it ain't broke..."

* * *

The T-Car was a sleek flying machine, using a pair of gravity repulsors to stay airborne and thrusters to move about the sky, and soon the five Titans reached the site where the giant monster was terrorizing skyscrapers and pedestrians alike, dripping a caustic green goop down into the streets above Haney Park.

The easiest way to describe monster was 'a giant bug'. To get more complex, it was essentially a giant praying mantis, wings fluttering and keeping it aloft while oozing yellow-green liquids dripped from its huge toothy maw. Its legs hung below it, the lowest ones scraping the city's mid-tier sky-scrapers; and on top of the bug's head stood a woman—abnormally tall, at least 6'5'', and possessing a long mane of blonde hair. Her outfit looked more like a pink prom dress than a battle garment, and she wielded a flaming whip in her right hand.

The Titans quickly abandoned the car, and Superboy swooped down and punched the massive insect in the face, right below the eye. The ocular orb bulged as if the force almost ejected it from the bug's head, then snapped back as the bug snarled and hissed, spitting the acidic slime that dripped from its mouth onto Superboy with incredible force.

The Teen of Steel careened backwards into a building and quickly used his tactile telekinesis to throw all the acid off his clothing.

Claire and Phaeism tried next, Phaeism turning his body into a whirl of ethereal blades that sliced into the bug's carapace, while Claire blasted at its big red eyes with her photon cannon.

Robin landed on the top of the bug's thorax, throwing an incendiary grenade to the nearby Ignis and telling him to get it under the bug's carapace and ignite it. "

I'll handle Amazon Lady," she cried, coming up with a name for the massive woman on the spot. But before she could turn and attack, a sharp pain slammed into her back and she fell forward, rolling as the woman's flaming whip slammed into the bug's exoskeleton where she had just been.

She looked up to see the woman standing ten feet away, her eyes glaring down with unconcealed scorn.

"Pitiful superheroes, attempting to ruin my fun," she spat. "You don't have any business with the great Katherine Van Clear."

"The only thing great about you is your ego," quipped Robin, dodging another strike of the whip; she returned fire with a pair of batarangs. The projectiles were quickly blasted out of the air by the fiery whip—which Robin decided must have been some form of plasma matrix—and shattered from the heat.

"You're not even worth my effort," said Katherine. "I'll have Fang destroy you and go about my business. Yes, Fang should do; he fought the last Robin."

Katherine tossed an object from her purse and it landed in front of Robin. The Girl Wonder backflipped away from it just as a brilliant flash exploded from the device, and Robin closed her eyes to shield them from the light.

When she opened them, there was a new enemy in front of her. This one seemed to be an average man—except that he had a giant spider for a head, and that giant Spider had six legs—all but the front two—and most of its abdomen lined or entirely made of cybernetic parts. The man seemed to hang from the spider's mouth, swinging gently back and forth from the vibrations of the giant bug's wings.

"Kill her," said Katherine.

The spider-man's eight eyes lit red with a strange murky glow. "I do your bidding, mistress Van Clear."

"Um… Okaaaaay." Robin blinked. She drew her escrima sticks from her belt and flicked them around to open them, then charged forward, bashing the spider-man even as he tried to impale her with the sharp points at the end of his mechanical legs.

A stream of venom erupted from Fang's mouth, and Robin dove out of the way, rolling right next to the base of the giant bug's wings.

Then she saw Ignis out of the corner of her eye, holding a stream of fire between his hands.

"BLAST HIM!" she cried, pointing at Fang.

Ignis' eyes opened wide in realization, and he flung the fireball at the spider-man, blasting him off the top of the bug and down into the steel canyon below. Ignis ran over to Robin. "You okay, leader?"

"You don't have to call me leader," she said. "And I'm fine. Where's the grenade I gave you.

"Oh, right, that!" Ignis said, turning and aiming towards the base of the other wing some fifty feet away. "I buried it in a chink in the exoskeleton over there."

"Wait, what?!" Robin said, getting off her butt to try and stop Ignis. She was too late, though, and fire lanced out and washed over the wing base as it flapped. Then, ignition.

_**KRAKOOM!**_

The wing exploded, chunks of carapace and ichor scattering everywhere as the wing broke off and began falling into the city below.

Of course, the fact remains that things that fly with wings need at least two. Simple physics began to kick in, and gravity started jerking the bug downward; it spat and screamed as it fell, the acid floating up into the air. Robin grabbed her young charge by the arm and jumped from the falling insect.

A flash of her grapple gun saved her from the fall, and the two swung together, Robin's grip being taxed to its limit as she landed on the roof of a nearby building—and only Robin. Ignis slammed into the side, causing Robin to drop him.

She gasped, leaning over the side of the building to see the boy plummet ten stories onto a fire escape below, smacking his head against the guardrail.

"IGNIS!" she cried, leaping down and using her memory fabric cape to slow her descent.

The bug's descent, however, could not be slowed, and it fell down into the steel canyons, landing atop buildings and shattering glass and bending steel.

Robin held Ignis against tightly against herself and hoped that he wasn't a casualty of his own mistake.

Her heart was racing too fast to even check his pulse.

* * *

"Robin, come in Robin!" Claire repeated into the communicator. "Robin?"

"I'm here," came Robin's voice. "Ignis is out cold from the fall. I'm okay."

"What happened out there, Carrie?" said Phaeism, condensing back into human form and taking the driver's seat of the Titans' flying car.

"Ignis blew off one of the bug's wings," said Carrie. "Cut him some slack, he's still a kid."

Claire shifted in her seat. "A kid who could have got a lot of people killed just now! Where are you?"

"Sending a homing signal. If you can get to the car, come find me. Where's Superboy?"

"We're_** in**_ the car--and we lost him."

"Lost who?"

"Superboy! We have no idea where he is."

* * *

Superboy awoke with a start, sitting up and immediately smacking his head against something hard; it must have been metal because it bent inward with the force, and it was cold as ice. He rolled over and turned on his heat vision at a low level, bathing everything in red light, but at least enough light to see.

And he saw that he was apparently in some sort of caved-in chamber, metal and tons and tons of debris scattered around, blocking the way up, and blocking any light that would have filtered down from the city above. At least, he assumed the city was still above him.

The memories of the battle came flooding back, and Kevin remembered that he had been struck by the bug, just as something had blown off the creature's wing. He turned on his X-Ray vision and used it to navigate the narrow space, remembering nothing after the blow. He must have blacked out, landed somewhere in the Undercity, he realized. He felt for his communicator and found it torn to shreds, broken bits of technology sifting through his fingers. Along side the broken communicator he found a rip in his jeans.

"Just great, these cost me 1000," he muttered. "I'm never buying designer brands again."

He crawled forward using his powers to push away rubble and such as needed, and finally found an exit from the pile into a large metal corridor, ribbed by huge steel beams that went on and on. Dim LEDs on the ceiling gave the hall a faint blue glow, but it was better than spraying everything with X-Rays considering the possibility of running into other civilians trapped in the crash.

Kevin quickly dismissed the possibility of plowing through the ceiling; it was lead lined and at least ten-feet thick, and he didn't know where in the city he was. He could come up right through a hospital or retirement home, or right into the middle of a supervillain convention for all he knew. Now that he thought of it, that last option would be great PR assuming he won the inevitable brawl.

Regardless, he kept on moving towards the end of the hall, hoping it brought him closer to an exit he could be sure he could trust.

* * *

Up above the dark corridor, the rest of the Titans weren't fairing much better. No sooner had Carrie reunited with the rest of the Titans, Fang and Katherine came back with a vengeance, both of them riding on a hovering platform that the tall woman could control with just gestures of her hands. As if those two weren't trouble enough, Katherine had summoned a swarm of bugs the size of large dogs that now seemed to cover the city. They spewed the same yellow-green acid from their maw as the dying behemoth that Ignis had done in.

Ignis, for his part, recovered quickly from his fall and began blasting the bugs with fire as soon as he could.

"Where are they all coming from?" asked Phaeism, slicing two of them in half with arms formed into blades, then puncturing two more through the head with sharp spikes that jutted from the mist.

"The Undercity!" Claire shouted to him over the ever-loudening thrum of the swarm. She unloaded her proton cannons on the nearest bug, then backed off as the others scattered, blasting them as she retreated.

"How can you tell?"

Claire turned and blasted a pair of bugs that were about to fly into Phaeism's back. The bolts swished through his gaseous body and blew the heads off both of the bugs.

"The smell," answered Claire. "I know what that place stinks of, and it's all over these bugs."

"Maybe they were released when the big one fell," Phae mused, becoming a whirlwind of green gas and slicing into every insect that came near him. "He opened up a hole that let the smaller guys out."

"I don't think so," Claire said. "They're coming from that direction." She motioned off into the distance where a tall decrepit old tower stood dwarfed by the modern super skyscrapers, the WALKER GENETICS logo half worn-off from years of disuse.

"Walker," said Phaeism. "That name and these bugs rings a bell."

Claire blasted some more. "Do tell," she muttered sarcastically.

If Phae picked up on the sarcasm, he didn't let on. Instead he launched into one of his helpful narrative explanations that he loved to inflict on everyone.

"Drury Walker was a supervillain also known as Killer Moth in the early 21st century."

"Never heard of him."

"He wasn't particularly good at it, but he owned a genetics company and secretly stole his own business equipment to build supervillain experiments in his home basement. He dressed like a giant bug and then made giant bugs that he wanted to rule the city with. He was actually quite successful from a genetics standpoint, he just never did anything noteworthy with it."

"Why," Claire growled, blasting away another group of bugs, "do these whackjob supervillains always have to have _a theme_?"

"Walker vanished a few years after he appeared, and his daughter apparently reformed and went into the cosmetics industry." Phaeism destroyed the last of the giant insects on the roof of that building, glancing across to Robin and Ignis, who were clearing another building as best they could. "But now I wonder."

He pulled out his communicator. "Robin, Phaeism here. I think the Amazon Lady who started all this is really Kitten Walker, the daughter of Killer Moth."

There was a long pause. "There's no way, man, she'd be as old as Nightwing by this point," came Carrie's reply. "That woman gave her full name and everything."

"You don't understand," Phaeism said. "I've been reading up on super villain psychology. The case study on Drury Walker said that he believed himself to be a rich entrepreneur known as Cameron Van Clear, and was under the delusion that Bruce Wayne was his arch enemy, Batman. But that's same last name 'Katherine' gave us."

"Uh yeah, delusions, right." Carrie paused again. "Then it must be his grand daughter," She said, as Phaeism watched her use a sword to decapitate threw bugs with one swing. "There's no way that woman is fifty-something years old."

* * *

Superboy finally wondered into a large room where view screens were everywhere, attached to decades-old computer terminals Wires dangled everywhere, and massive larvae crawled on the ceiling, along with the sporadic large cocoon. A few more cocoons lay on the floor, empty. Superboy quickly decided to terminate all the larvae and the cocoons with heat vision; he did so, his blasts tearing through them easily. But their dying screams echoed through the corridor, and distantly, Superboy's enhanced hearing began picking up the cries of more such genetic monstrosities, the banging of cages and containment fields.

Great spiffing Rao, what had happened here?

Superboy switched the wires around on the nearest computer terminal, noticing on the terminal a photo of a large man dressed like a giant bug and an attractive (but wicked-looking) teenage girl. They seemed to be family, but there was an air of hostility between them even in the photo.

Finally the computer screen flickered on, showing the desktop of an operating system that seemed straightforward enough. Superboy began searching the files. For a while, he found nothing but incomprehensible stuff about genetics and insects, splicing DNA together and breaking RNA apart. He finally came across a folder labeled VIDEO LOG, and opened it to find a series of videos labeled by date. Most of them were during the height of the Great Supervillain War.

Kevin couldn't help himself, and opened one; the large bug-dressed man in the photo appeared on the screen and began talking into the video log.

_"Date is August 9, 2017. The Brain's war is underway; he finally got what he wanted and he even offered me a position in Europe. I told him that I'd be glad to help, but my labs were here and I needed my equipment. He seemed to accept that._

_Kitten didn't want to join. She seems very angry, so I'll have to tread lightly with her in the future. She's my only daughter and I don't want to scorn her like I did with her mother. Hell hath no fury, after all."_

Superboy blanched. Kitten? That little (hot) shrimp in the photo was bossing the big guy around? Then he must have been her father; it was the only logical explanation.

He clicked a second video with a later date.

"_Date is January 3, 2018. _

_Kitten has been stomping around upstairs and demanding that I let her go to Europe to see Fang. He was wounded in the war by that accursed Starfire. I'm tempted to let her go for no other reason than to get her out of the house while I work on the Final Serum. But I can't, that would make me a bad father. I don't want to be a bad father to her."_

"The guy's a total wuss." Superboy realized.

The dates of the video files got closer together, and Superboy watched them sporadically. It got to the point that Killer Moth—as he called himself—was making the vlogs every night, and growing more and more distraught as each of them went by.

"_I don't care what the Brain wants this time," he growled. "I don't care if the targets were invalid and not a part of his plan. This isn't war, this is science. It doesn't have rules! Okay, so it does. Screw the rules, I posses capital!"_

_  
He sat back, exhaled deeply, and seemed to calm down. "Kitten's cosmetics firm opened today. She sent me her best wishes, but I worry that there was something... sinister in the way she worded the letter. I replied in kind, though. She's my daughter."_

_"_O-KAAAAY..."

And finally, the last video record.

_The man on the screen this time was Killer Moth, and wasn't. He was haggard, his mask off and his face a mess, sweaty and unshaven. He muttered the date into the microphone, and then began ranting about Kitten some more. "She's out of control, spending money here, murdering civilians there. She's trying to fix Fang instead of letting him go. After all that poor boy has been through, she wants to keep him alive. I can't stop her, can't reign her in. She's coming to visit tonight, and the Brain wants me to kill her so she can't cause his crusade any more harm. I don't care what the Brain wants. I can't kill my flesh and blood. I have to change her. The Final Serum is ready. I'll inject it into her tonight and then, she'll change. She'll be perfect. Then the Brain will have a use for her. He'll let her live."_

_He paused, lowering his head onto the desk and lowering his voice to a near whisper._

_  
"It's her only hope."_

Superboy recoiled from the computer and vacantly walked out of the room, his spine tingling the whole way from what he had witnessed. Soon, he came across a large room where more science experiments rested, tubes full of formaldehyde and all sorts of chemicals. The far wall, though, held a massive stasis chamber. Superboy walked over and began wiping the dust from the plate at the bottom.

"Drury Walker," it read. "Final Serum Experiment – Codename Charaxes."

And below that, more words. Superboy rubbed them off.

"I LOVE YOU DADDY," it said, engraved in jagged lines made with a hand-held laser.

Superboy looked up at the monstrous insect cocoon inside the stasis chamber. Then his gut welled up in horror as he realized what it all meant.

* * *

Robin rolled out of the way and Ignis blasted a beam of fire across her path, the fire lashing out and striking the tip of Katherine Van Clear's plasma whip. The whip somehow managed to stop the stream of fire, causing it to ball up and dissipate.

"The laws of physics mean nothing in this world!" Ignis whined. "Come on!"

Robin grabbed some batarangs from her belt and flung them at Van Clear. "Don't complain, just fight."

The insects were swarming over the city even more, though the police and SWAT teams had finally arrived to help control them. The Titans were focusing on the cybernetic Fang and his evil mistress. Fang and Clair were going at it, cybernetic limb to cybernetic limb, while Phaeism tried to sneakily drift his gaseous self onto Katherine's platform and see if he could find a way to get rid of the bugs that were covering the town.

Phaeism looked up to see Robin recoil from a kick to her face, then the plasma whip lashing out into Ignis and knocked him down, cutting a gash across his chest and burning his clothing.

He gasped sharply and began pressing more buttons.

Then, as he found a kill switch that he hoped meant 'kill the bugs' and not 'kill the engine', he pulled it—and immediately felt an incredible jolt rip through his body, forcing his molecules to coalesce into their solid human form; his heart and lungs reformed in full, and he fell to the deck of the flying platform.

"Did someone try to sneak onto my ride?" Katherine asked, using the whip Indiana Jones-style to get back on the platform. "It seems they did. Whatever could it be for?"

"Got any bug spray?" Phaeism hissed through his gritted teeth. Katherine responded by stomping her heel into his shoulder.

Just then, Claire's hydraulics failed and she was knocked across the rooftop and landed on the recovering Ignis and Robin, pinning them down.

"Great, I busted a line," she spat. "Spiff. Spiff it."

The hovering platform moved closer to the downed Titans, and Fang crept across the buildings.

"Sorry, guys," Katherine said with mock sweetness. "But this party is beyond over. Fangy-Poo and I have a date with destruction. Mwahahahahahaha!"

"Oh she did NOT just laugh maniacally!" Claire shouted, getting up and using her good arm to try and blast the witch's vocal cords out.

Fang's arms came up and blocked the shot, the metal scorched from the blast; then he returned fire with venom that froze Claire solid in her tracks.

"End of the line," hissed Fang, once again in his monotonous zombie-like tone.

"I agree," shouted a new voice. Well, it's not new to any of you, dear readers.

"Superboy!" Ignis shouted, glad for the first time ever to see that demi-god Kryptonian. Kevin hovered fifty yards away from Katherine's flying platform, and held a massive stasis chamber above him, one that looked like it had just been freshly ripped out of the wall terminal that held and powered it.

"Hey Kitten," Superboy said. "Mind if I call you Kitten? Your dad did."

"No!" Katerine said, both eyes and her entire mind focused on the big stasis chamber. "Put that down you moron! That's extremely volatile."

"I know exactly what's in it, Kitten."

"My name is Katherine Van Clear!"

"Your name is Kitten Walker, daughter of Killer Moth. I saw all the video logs; I figured out what you did to your father, Kitten. He loved you more than anything, but you cared about nothing but yourself. You drove him insane well after you turned eighteen. He could never say no."

"He could never say yes!" Katherine spat. "He was a fool. Do not open that thing child, you don't know what's in it!"

"I do to!" Superboy yelled. "This is your legacy. You were so out of control that the Brotherhood of Evil wanted your father to kill you—and your father refused. But he decided to do something else. He was going to change you into a monster that the Brotherhood wouldn't kill. In his own spiffed up logic, that was love."

"Stop it!" Katherine cried, falling to her knees. "Stop it, none of this is true!"

"But something went wrong. Maybe he couldn't bring himself to do it, so he did it to himself instead. Or maybe he failed to get you, and you transformed him into this freak for revenge. Whatever happened, this is your fault. You drove him insane, and this is what happened."

Superboy flexed his muscles, and power surged through them; his tactile telekinesis kicked in, and the entire massive stasis chamber exploded, the glass shattering and revealing a giant cocoon with in.

Kevin grimaced and tossed it into the air towards Katherine. "Catch!" he shouted, as the cocoon hurled upwards and fluids dripped from its sides, running down into the city below.

Katherine fell, the ground of her hovering platform, shrieking like a mad woman. Just then, Phaeism grabbed her, pulling off his coat and turning it vapor just long enough to transfuse it into a straight jacket. Katherine—no, Kitten—shrieked again, and fell silent, her left eye twitching.

It was the only evidence she was even still alive.

Superboy flew up and caught the cocoon, then turned and flung it skyward, directly towards the sun.

"It was already dead," he said as he landed by the rest of the Titans. "The power failed years ago and the stasis chemicals couldn't keep the cocoon alive forever."

"How on Earth can she look twenty and be fifty-something?" Robin asked, staring at the now-catatonic woman lying across the metal platform.

"She ran a cosmetics company. All the plastic surgery she could eat, and the need to preserve a delusion of eternal youth. It's a nasty combination."

* * *

"I hope you learned your lesson today," Robin said, crossing her arms and looking down sternly at Ignis, his arm and chest bandaged up from the fight.

"I was just following your orders," he pleaded, a frown twisting onto his face. "You told me to blow something up."

"I didn't tell you to blow the wing off."

"I thought that would do the most damage."

"Oh it did damage all right," Claire interjected. "Damage to the city. You're lucky nobody got killed."

"Honestly, it's done," Superboy said. "Besides, if he hadn't caused the thing to fall, it wouldn't have knocked me into the Undercity and I wouldn't have found Killer Moth's remains and Kitten would still be terrorizing the city instead of lying catatonic in the hospital."

"You shouldn't be proud of breaking someone's mind," Robin retorted.

"I'm not, I just wanted to scare her into surrendering. She deserved it anyway after what she put that man through."

"That all said," Phaeism interjected. "We're still not done yet. Fang gave us the slip and there are still plenty more of those bugs we still have to kill. We'll be cleaning this mess up for a while."

Claire nodded. "And that doesn't even count the Brotherhood."

"We'll deal with it," Robin said. "But we have to act as a team instead of five individuals. Remember that. It got us through this time, but it may not in the future."

"Not the power of friendship moral," Ignis whined. "That Aesop is so four decades ago."


	12. Kamigami no Kaze

**Chapter Twelve - Kamigami no Kaze**

Thunder crashed against the side of the sky, and lightning streaked across it. Carrie Kelly pulled her robe around her more tightly as a chilly wind rushed in through the cracked window. She quickly shut it, and then sat down at the foot of her bed, high up in Masters Tower. The raging storm outside was the worst Jump City had seen since '45, with lighting that crackled across the steel towers of the city, and hurricane force winds dumping sheets of rain onto its busy highways. The Undercity would be flooded.

The tower swayed and lurched slightly with the force of the winds, and Carrie thought she'd seen enough. It would be hard enough to get to sleep with the constant crash of thunder, and all the harder if her inner ear was out of whack.

She hung her robe on the chair at her computer desk, and slipped under the covers. She drifted off to sleep, ignoring the deep foreboding in her chest as she tried to rest.

* * *

A dark room, an assailant. He breathed heavily as he stood over his two victims, murdered in cold blood. The storm outside was raging, but it would clear up soon enough. His victims wouldn't be found any time soon. And he was quite patient.

So he sat and watched the rain fall from the heavens and down into the valleys of steel and concrete.

* * *

The day after the storm, everything was clear. The sky had few clouds, the sun shone brightly, and the temperature was pleasant, almost warm for a November morning. So of course, the boys of Masters Tower wanted to spend the day doing nothing but…

Playing vidgames…

Of course.

Claire watched in reserved amusement, mostly at Ignis' enthusiasm, as they tore through wave after wave of zombies and vampires in the latest release in the Mangler Brothers franchise, _Mangler Prime 2: Symphony of the Moon_.

"Eat broomstick!" cried Ignis wailing on the B-Button as his character sliced and diced a bunch of their foes into oblivion.

"That's boomstick, spifftard," said Superboy. "And it means shotgun. You don't have a shotgun."

"Whatever, I just surpassed both your kill counts combined," Ignis said. "At this rate I'm going to unlock the best weapons by the fifth level."

"That's not possible."

Ignis nodded enthusiastically. "It totally is. I talked to someone on the internet who knew someone's cousin who did it."

"Then it must be true!" Superboy said, mashing his buttons all the harder, eschewing style kills for sheer volume.

Phaeism just groaned and continued playing.

About that time, just as Claire was getting bored of watching the game, Carrie walked into the room holding a cup of orange juice and a sausage biscuit. "That was one hellacious storm last night," she commented.

"Spiff yeah," Claire said. "I almost decided to wake Daniel up and see if he could let me sleep in the basement. Tower was swayin' so much."

"Say," Carrie said, sitting in the floor by Claire's easy chair. "What do you say we go shopping today and get you some decent clothes. I've got plenty of money."

"I'm not really into that sort of thing," Claire sighed. "But I guess I could use a few new shirts after the past few weeks."

"Okay, we'll—" Just as Carrie started to speak, her Titan communicator began buzzing, so she put down breakfast and flicked the device open to see the screen_. _"Who is 'Phantasm'?"

"It's Daniel," Phaeism commented over his shoulder. "That was his code name back when he was a Titan."

Carrie answered the call, and her face became concerned as the voice on the other end began sounding an urgent warning. It was Samantha, not Daniel. She thanked Sam for the heads up and then snapped the Com shut.

"Guys, pause it," Carrie ordered. She grabbed the remote from a table and put the TV on a news channel. One of the CGI talking heads was narrating a scene outside a nice apartment on the far end of town. But what immediately caught everyone's attention was the bold white text at the bottom of the screen, a headline that would probably find its way onto tomorrow's newspapers:

**TWILIGHT OF THE DEMI-GODS  
Former Titans Thunder and Lightning Murdered**

* * *

**  
**Thunder and Lightning and retired from active duty a while back, and now spent most of their time at an institute they had founded for troubled metahuman teenagers. It was powered entirely by their own magic, and had helped dozens of young people in the twenty years it had been active. Their home was attached to the bottom of the massive silver building, and had been secured with some of the finest technology Cyborg had access to, thanks to his JLA affiliation.

When the Titans arrived, the area was swarming with police, cars lining the streets in all directions, and several hovering above the road with mounted sentry cannons. The area had already been taped off.

"We need inside," Robin said. "This is Titans business and we're the new Teen Titans."

"I'm sorry, but this is a sensitive investigation," one of the cops said. "Detective Williams is examining the crime scene now, and we can't let anyone back there."

The police explained to Robin that the security cameras had picked up no signs of any intruder, there was no evidence of forced entry, and nobody had seen anything suspicious.

"I'm sorry, kid, but you'll have to wait until you can get clearance," said the chubby mustachioed police officer. "And that won't be today."

"Nonsense," came a new voice. The Titans turned to see a tall man in a brown trench coat and fedora en the entrance to the home.

"Detective Williams," the officer said, motioning towards the Titans. "They wanted to see the crime scene."

"Of course they did," Williams said. "They're superheroes; the vics are former superheroes. Let them in."

* * *

"Man, he's cold," Phaeism overheard one of the officers say. And in response, another said.

"Yeah, I can't believe he just calls them 'the vics' when he's—"

Whatever came next, Phaeism couldn't here, because the siren of one of the nearby cop cars started up, the engine flaring on and the vehicle flying away.

The Titans and Detective Williams passed through the threshold of the house and into a large living room. The bodies had already been removed, but there were holographic representations of them and their positions at the time of death. The hologram representing Thunder was lying sprawled out on his back, a hole through his chest big enough for a human fist to enter. The cause of death was determined to be an energy blast of unknown origin to the chest. Lightning, on the other hand, had been sitting in a recliner watching television; he had been shot once through the back of the head. The bullet had apparently caused some kind of electrical discharge, because there were burn marks around his body and an excessive amount of static in the chair.

The cops had not determined who had been killed first, but they had been killed within a very short time of each other sometime around 11:30 PM, just before the storm had started.

An old revolver, the serial number filed off and everything wiped clean of prints, had been found in the sink. It was the murder weapon used on Lightning, without a doubt.

"Do they have any current enemies?" Robin asked.

The detective grunted, lighting a cigarette and taking a long drag from it. "I was hoping you could enlighten us there. Thunder and Lighting didn't really exist anymore. They were civilians, going by their civilian names of Gan and Tavis."

"What about their group?" Claire asked. "Maybe someone in their foundation wanted something."

"Say," Phaeism said, suddenly piecing together the conversation of the police earlier. "This place is built under the Williams Institute. Thunder and Lightning went by Gan and Tavis _Williams. _Which is also your last name."

"Yeah." The detective took another long drag of his cigarette. "It's not a very uncommon last name, but in this case there's no coincidence. I'm related to the victims, which is why I requested to be put on this case."

"Related how?" Robin asked pointedly.

The tip of detective's cigarette glowed orange briefly. "Lightning—Tavis Williams—was my father."

* * *

"I don't like it," Phaeism said, leaning against the wall in the Titans' common room at Master's Tower. "He's too close to the case. His judgment is going to be clouded."

Daniel Chase dipped his head and shrugged. "I'm not saying that you're wrong, Alex. But obviously the chief of police didn't think there would be a conflict of interests. Besides, I worked with Williams once, just before I retired."

"And what was your opinion of him?" Robin asked, scratching her chin with her ungloved left hand.

"He's a bastard," Daniel said, drawing a smile of approval from Phaeism. Then he amended, "But he's a fine cop and dedicated to his job. I don't think he's going to be a problem."

Claire shook her head. "If you ask me, he didn't seem too torn up about his dad and uncle getting wasted. The man is colder than that Ice Monster we trashed."

Alex looked doubtful. "People grieve in different ways."

"Enough," Robin said, pulling her glove back on. "We need to start asking questions around the Superhero community to see if there's anyone who would want these two dead. The police are capable of handling the mundane side of the investigation."

Ignis stepped forward. "Want me to call my parents?"

"You do that," Robin said. "Phae, search the 'Net for the history of the victims; Claire, contact the JLA. Cyborg seems to like you. I'll see if I can get in touch with Nightwing."

"Titans go," Claire muttered without any enthusiasm.

* * *

The clouds obscured the starry heavens that night, but soon they parted in the West and the rays of a bright full moon began to shine down on Jump City. A god, terrible to behold and arrayed in lightning, gazed down at the bodies of his two sons and sighed in disgust.

_Weaklings._

A powerful wind begin to blow, and the god vanished, lightning crackling across an otherwise serene night sky. The Wind would soon arrive, and then Raiden would know who had murdered his sons.

* * *

Two days later, the Titans had a list of names of villains who might want Thunder and Lightning dead. This brought them no closer to finding the killer, however, for the majority of them were dead or in prison. The few that weren't had not been heard from in years, and could be anywhere, even off-planet.

So, while the Titans went out on one of their daily patrols, Robin took a detour from hers and slipped into the Williams Institute building undetected, using her active camouflage system to hide from security cameras. The shadows in the building were so thick that Carrie felt she was breathing them in. Most of the young people the Institute helped had been taken elsewhere while the investigation was going on—only the most dire patients remained, a fact that frightened Robin on some level. Metahumans and mutants with mental malfunctions tended to be difficult opponents, and mentally ill Metahumans were the Institute's primary patrons.

Three detectives had gone over the crime scene and found nothing of interest, and Robin anticipated that she would find the same. Her reason for being here was further pursuit of motive.

Robin eventually found a room high in the institute's halls that required a security code to enter. Robin used her communicator to hack the panel and slipped in past a janitor, who stared befuddled as the door hissed open and closed for no apparent reason.

The room was a computer lab, with multiple high-tech machines that seemed to all be running complex calculations. Robin waited there for the janitor to leave, and then began searching the systems, looking for any shred of data that might add up to murder.

* * *

"I'm watching you," hissed his voice.

Alex coalesced into human form out of the shadows near the Jump City Police Department. Robin wasn't the only Titan who had taken a detour from the normal patrol pattern.

The target of his threat chuckled and pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, lighting one and replacing the rest. "Is that so?"

"Do this by the books," Phaeism told Detective Williams. "I don't know you, but I know what it is to grieve. It can make you do crazy things. Illegal things, perhaps. Don't let it."

"Boy, I'm not sure I like what you're implying. This job is my life. I wouldn't throw it away for revenge. Even for my own kin."

"I hope so," Phaeism said, vanishing back into the shadows, not liking the smug expression on the detective's face.

* * *

"You did _what!?" _Phaeism demanded as he leaned forward into Robin's personal space. They were back at the Tower now, the day waning into night.

"I got some information that might point us in the right direction. Simple as that."

"You broke the law," Phaeism said. "Breaking and entering, trespassing, grand theft intellectual." The rest of the Titans just rolled their eyes. All of them figured that Phae and Carrie would eventually get together the way they constantly fought like an old married couple.

"Sometimes that's necessary to further the mission," Robin growled. "We have no leads while someone who murdered two of the previous generation's Titans is running free. Supervillains have nothing to gain, but someone in the institute might."

"And who might this be?" Phaeism asked pointedly, his voice betraying his skepticism.

"Obi Suresh." Robin tossed a print out of him on the table. "He's the head psychologist at the institute and is by all accounts expected to inherit both the institute and the victims' estates. He'll be in charge once this is over."

"And his profit motive is just… money?"

"It's brought greater men to their ruin," Robin said. "Dr. Suresh was an unpopular choices head doctor because rumors of previous supervillain connections. Supposedly a journalist threatened to publish the details and then died in a convenient car crash days later."

"It can't be that simple," Phaeism said. "If he's such an obvious suspect, then why haven't we heard anything about it before?"

"The lack of a smoking gun, or even enough evidence implicating him to obtain a search warrant. That's where you come in, Phae."

"Oh no." Phaeism turned green. Well, green_er_.

"I need you to use your magic green gas and sneak into his home and spy on him."

"This is ridiculous!" Phaeism smashed his hand against the wall. "I'm not going to break the law to further your attempts to pin the crime on a man who might be guilty of nothing."

"If you don't find anything incriminating, then I won't pursue the matter any further." Robin leaned back against the kitchen counter and crossed her arms over her chest. "Will you do it for a Scooby Snack?"

"Funny." Phaeism turned his back to Robin and began walking out of the room. He paused by the door and glanced over his shoulder. "Fine. I'll play Mission Impossible, for now. But if I don't find something that's pretty spiffing convincing, I'm out."

"Good." Robin leaned back and smiled. "Glad you see it my way."

* * *

Dr. Obi Suresh left the institute every day at 11PM (though he was on-call 24 hours a day in the event of an emergency) and drove in a land-car (for Obi hated to fly) straight home to his loving wife and twelve year old son. She usually had supper waiting for him, and he never failed to enjoy whatever she cooked. He had lived this way for eleven years and noticed if something was slightly off. He had to, given the bad things that had happened before.

He noticed something off this day, but he never put his finger on what. Something about the way the car was riding during his drive home, perhaps.

Yes, that was it. He'd get it serviced soon.

Of course, it wouldn't do any good, because by the time it got to the shop, the hidden passenger would be long gone.

Phaeism, in his gaseous form, slipped out of the inside of the front driver's side tire and crept along the grass, reaching Obi's door and slipping through the cracks. Carefully he concealed himself in the shadows, waiting until Obi and his family were absorbed in their meal before he slipped up the stairs, probing until he found the master bedroom.

He coalesced into the form of a teen once again and looked around. The bedroom was nice, plush, even. Perhaps Obi wasn't quite wealthy, but it seemed that money would be no motive for murder for this man. He had plenty of it, Phaeism thought.

Quickly sifting through drawers and documents as quietly as he could, Phaeism began compiling in his head a list of everything that looked the slightest bit incriminating; by the time he was finished, it was a very short list. Just a few sales receipts with the nature of the items marked out by the —which in 2049 in California could mean anything from a Playboy Magazine to assault rifle ammunition.

Phaeism was about to give up when he heard footsteps coming up the hall. Quickly he rolled under the bed, becoming gaseous and spreading as thin as he could, while remaining hidden in the shadows. It was a good thing he didn't have to breathe in gaseous form.

Obi gasped when he saw his belongings ransacked as they were. Phae hadn't had time to clean up, and had left the majority of the documents lying on the bed. Obi quickly filed them back where they belonged and began muttering to himself, stressed out.

"They know," he whispered. "They know…"

Obi fell to his knees, and a sharp anxiety washed through Phaeism's disparate molecules. At first he thought he had been discovered, but then, he heard the mattress of the bed lift and Obi sigh in relief. Obi looked under the bed, but obviously didn't see the shadowed Titan. Soon, he left, the room, locking the door behind him.

Without touching the floor, Phaeism coalesced his arms and head into their quasi-solid state, and slipped a tendril under the mattress to pull out the leather-bound book inside.

Its contents shocked the Titan to his core.

* * *

"It was him," Phaeism said, sitting in one of Daniel's easy chairs, hunched over shivering slightly. "He had plans—dozens of plans written down in some macabre diary under his bed."

"Did any of them resemble what actually went down?" Claire asked.

"Yes… No… I don't know!" Phaeism glared harshly at the teen cyborg. "I didn't read all of them, I just know he wanted the brothers dead and apparently fantasized about ways to do it. Often."

"That won't hold up in court," said Robin, "unless there's something to tie him to the actual crime. Fantasizing about killing people isn't illegal despite what the thought police would prefer."

"There were several scenarios in which he shot them both in the head, and those were among the least gruesome."

"Spiff me sideways!" Kevin said. "And this is a _therapist. _The _head doctor of the hospital?_"

"It sounds like he needs a taste of his own medicine," Ignis quipped. "Literally."

Phaeism groaned at the joke, then turned to Robin. "So what do we do? Even if Williams believes us, how will he get a search warrant?"

"I don't think that's going to be a problem, kids." Daniel Chase entered the room and motioned for the Titans to follow him into the room where the television sat. It was turned on to a news station:

**ARREST MADE IN TITAN MURDER CASE**

**Chief Doctor of Williams Institute to be Indicted**

* * *

"What do you think you're doing?" Robin stood in the doorway, blocking Detective Williams' exit as she questioned him. The police station was buzzing with people, and Robin had worn street clothes except for her domino mask, a hoodie with the hood up, and a pair of black gloves to prevent finger prints from getting left in public.

"Going about my business, girl," he snapped. "What are you doing here? And why are you wearing that ridiculous get up?"

"How did you get a search warrant? Where's the evidence to arrest him? I didn't want to think Phaeism was right, and as guilty as I think Suresh is, he deserves due process like everyone else."

"He'll get it," growled Williams. "Now get out of my way."

"There was no evidence that pointed to him. That's not due process."

"We found incriminating files on his computer at the institute," responded Williams as if reading from a cue card. "It was deemed sufficient cause to obtain a search warrant of his home, and we found plenty in his home to put him in prison for the rest of his life."

"There was nothing on the computer at the Institute. I searched them myself."

Williams eyes narrowed and his mood grew considerably darker. "Back off, little girl. I'm not going to let this man get away with murder. No matter what was or wasn't on his computers."

Robin gasped, the realization of what happened dawning on her. "You forged evidence," she hissed.

"Did I?" Detective Williams took a step back and lit a cigarette. "I think it would behoove you not to press this matter any further, Robin. Unless you want me to take your earlier admission as a confession to trespassing and grand theft intellectual."

Robin stepped aside and let Williams pass, blinking as his trail of smoke drifted into her eyes.. It was time to pay Obi Suresh a visit. She knew what Phaeism had found. Now it was time to hear the suspect's side of the story.

* * *

"It still doesn't make any sense," Ignis said, sitting over the Titans case notes so far. "Why would he want to kill his bosses?"

Claire laughed. "I dunno, kid. Haven't you ever wanted to kill Robin when she rides our butts over a case?"

"No!" Ignis blinked. "Well, yes, but not enough to plan elaborate murder scenarios!"

Phaeism sighed. "I don't understand it either. Maybe being around crazy people for so long, the 'good' doctor just finally snapped an went a little crazy himself."

"Not that my opinion means much," Superboy began, "but just because he fantasized and planned their murders doesn't mean he did it. Was there anything specific like a date he planned to go through with it?"

"I don't know," Phae admitted. "I didn't read the whole thing, or look through all the gory details. There was some pretty revolting stuff. And trust me, when a history freak says something was revolting, that's saying a lot."

"Perhaps—" intruded a familiar voice, "There was a profit motive of a more arcane nature."

The Titans turned to see Samantha Chase entering the room with a large, dusty tome with Japanese kanji characters on the cover and a metal fastener holding it shut.

"Daniel and I talked and we agreed that you all are overlooking a pretty big detail."

"What's that?" Phae asked.

"The identities of the victims. Not their civilian personas, but where they came from." Samantha placed the book down on the coffee table in the Titans common room and opened it to a place she had marked.

"This is about Japanese magical rituals. Daniel's parents were paranormal investigators, and this belonged to them. This page in particular seemed pretty relevant."

"_Kamigami no Kaze_?" asked Superboy, reading the text on the page and quickly translating it in his Kryptonian brain. "That's 'Wind of the Gods', right?"

"Yeah. It might be better localized as 'Breath of the Gods', though." Samantha ran her finger along the text on the page. "It was supposed to give the recipient—whoever breathes it in—incredible power. There were supposedly several ways to draw it down from the heavens—including the murder of a god."

Phae frowned. "What does that have to do with Thunder and Lighting. They weren't really gods."

"They were two demi-gods, though." Samantha looked at Alex pointedly. "Two sons of Raiden were murdered—two half-gods. Together, what if it were the same as murdering one full-fledged god?"

"Sounds like a bunch of spiffin' magical mumbo-jumbo to me," Claire said.

"You think that Obi wanted to murder them in order to get this power?" Phae thought a moment. "But why would he want it?"

"Who knows?" Samantha closed the book and picked up, beginning to walk out of the room. "It's just something to consider. One more thing—the wind is only supposed to go to the one who actually committed the murder. Once you know for sure who the killer is, it might be too late to stop them."

Phaeism closed his eyes and thought for a moment. "In that case," he said at last, "we need to decide. Is Obi the killer, or is it someone else? And if so… who?"

* * *

"The killer was not me!" Obi Suresh exclaimed, beating his hands against the force field wall of his cell. Robin stood on the other side, looking at the small Calcutta man in a mixture of pity and scorn. If he was the killer, he didn't deserve the former; but even if he wasn't, he deserved the latter for his sick fantasies.

"Then who did it?"

"Williams!" Suresh cried. "Williams is the killer. He framed me! Why would I kill my own bosses?"

"Money?" Robin suggested. "Or perhaps just control over the Institute."

"Bah! I do not need money!" Suresh leaned against the wall, then slumped to his seat. "I have money. I already control the institute. I need neither of these things."

"You tell me why you wanted them dead," Robin hissed. "Don't pretend you didn't." She narrowed her eyes. "I know about your diary, Suresh."

Suddenly the little timid man in front of her transformed into a fighter; courage seemed to fill him, though Robin could still see terror buried deep in his eyes. He pointed a finger at the transparent barrier between them and snarled.

"You! It was you trespassing at my house last night!"

"No. But it was someone I sent."

"See, you admit it! You superheroes. I despise the lot of you. You act out your perversions in full view of the public, flaunting the law and scorning the rights of the average citizen. Superheroism is a mental illness, a disease, just like supervillainy."

"Awful judgmental coming from a therapist." Robin tried to read the man, but all she got was the same fury—cooler now, but still boiling under the surface. His fear was gone, or buried deep enough he wasn't showing it in his body language.

"My business is my own."

"Not if it involves plans to commit murder. You had the plans; you had the opportunity. And the best you can come up with as an alternative is the victims' closest kin. You realize how flimsy your case looks."

"My motive for wanting them dead should be obvious. Did your friend who trespassed on my property not tell you about the bullet holes that riddled the front of my home? Did he not notice the broken windows? The fire damage?"

"What?" Robin gasped, suddenly confused. "What does that have to do with the Williams brothers."

"Nothing! The Gan and Tavis were excellent bosses!" Obi laughed, a laugh that made Robin sick. It was full of self-satisfaction and a bitter mockery of humor. "But their power! Oh my, their power! The hoodlums that terrorized my home day in and day out while would have cowered in fear if I had a fraction of what the brothers did."

"They wouldn't help you?"

"They told me to hire security!" Obi snorted. "Security! What good can security do against metahuman terrorist? Fire warning shots? Ha! I hate superheroes, but I needed them. And none would come to my aid. So yes, I _wanted_ to murder Thunder and Lightning. They deserved it for being inconsiderate jerks. I wanted that _Kamigami no Kaze_ to descend on me. But I never got a chance to waste them."

"Someone else beat you to it—" Robin gasped. "But who? Williams? Why would he kill his own father and uncle?"

Obi smiled—that smile that made Robin sick once again. He pointed behind her. "Why don't you ask him?"

Robin turned, finding Detective Williams standing face to face with her. She glanced to the side to see the security cameras dormant and the guard lying on the floor, breathing shallowly.

"Simple," Williams said, exhaling a cloud of smoke into her face. "I didn't want this worm of a doctor getting the power that was rightfully mine."

Robin felt a punch to her gut and a jolt of electricity arc through her system, and then everything fell black.

* * *

"I can't get a hold of Robin!" Superboy called, hanging out the window of the T-Car as it blasted through the air towards the detention center. Robin's signal had just faded, and worse, a massive storm the likes of which hadn't been seen in the history of Jump City seemed to be brewing over the ocean.

The car swooped down towards the upper entrance to the detention center, buffeted by wind. Lighting streaked between two skyscrapers and Superboy retreated back into the car.

"Guys," he said. "That's not ordinary lightning. I can see something in it. Something… magic."

"Great!" Alex turned, moving the car away from the detention center just as a bolt of lightning struck the landing platform. "That was close."

"There, on top of the new STAR Labs building!" Superboy cried. "It's Williams. How the spiff did he get up there?"

"No idea. What's he doing?"

"He's just standing there!" Superboy leaned forward and used his telescopic vision. "Holy spiff, he has Robin with him! She's out cold, but still breathing."

Alex swore, fighting against the wind as he drove the T-Car closer to the building where Williams stood. As he rounded the huge Wayne Enterprises Skyscraper that dominated the center of the city, Alex and the rest of the Titans looked out over the bay and saw two massive waterspouts whirling past Titans Island and moving closer to the city. Lightning still danced across the sky, and it had started to rain.

"Oh no!" he gasped.

"It's that Kaze no Thingy!" Ignis cried. "It's heading this way."

"Williams!" Ignis spat. "I knew it. I knew there was something fishy about this."

"This is crazy, they were his family!" Claire leaned forward. "What kind of sick bastard would murder his own father?"

Just then, a crackle of static followed by a voice—Williams voice—erupted over the T-Car's speaker. "Evening, Titans. I didn't think you'd mind if I borrowed Robin's communicator."

"What do you want, detective?" Alex had to restrain himself from calling the man some very unkind names.

"Just a little bit of time. You see, I have your friend here. Unless you want me to end her life, you'll wait until those two tornados reach me. And believe me, once you've committed one or two murders, a third isn't so hard."

"You're sick," Superboy spat. "I'll tear you limb from limb."

"Ah, kid," Williams said, a burst of lightning crackling from his finger tips. "You're fast, but you're not as fast as lightning."

Superboy leaned back into the car and snarled. "What do we do, Alex?"

"We wait!" He said. "I'm not gonna risk Robin's life."

"If you don't risk it, we might all die when he gets the powers of a god!" Superboy grabbed the wheel and jerked pulled it his way, but Phaeism managed to wrench it back by using his power to lubricate it, making it slip out of Kevin's hands.

"You slimy little—"

"Think for a minute! We can't just let Robin die, genius."

"Well we can't let him get super powers either! He's already killed two people! What's going to stop him from killing more once he has super powers?"

"We are!" Ignis said. "You're part Greek deity, I'm part demon. We can fight him on his level."

"Have you SEEN a Japanese god?" Superboy made a face that indicated a painful memory. "Those guys are SCARY."

"We're not risking Robin's life!" Alex reiterated.

"It's a risk she'd want us to take!" Superboy shot back.

"Guys!" Claire interjected pointing out the window. "It's here!"

The two massive waterspouts were now two massive funnels of wind, whirling everything in their path into a huge tornado that arced closer to Williams. The detective laughed giddily as the wind lifted him up off the ground and tossed Robin aside like a rag doll. Then he breathed in, the entirety of both tornados vanishing into the detective's lungs.

Superboy shot out of the car and grabbed Robin, carrying her to the relative safety of a nearby rooftop.

About that time, the spiff hit the fan, as a burst of thunder and lighting crackled loudly from inside Williams, his appearance transforming. His skin became flushed green, his hair sleeked back. His clothing vanished, replaced by samurai armor that covered him from head to toe; the only remaining traits that identified it as Williams were the coat and hat, now jet black, and the former a long, almost-demonic appendage instead of simple raingear.

"So this is what real power feels like," Williams said. "I like it."

"You won't like it long!" Ignis cried, leaning out the window of the car. "Azarath Metrion Zinthos!"

A massive phoenix of fire erupted from his body and arced towards Williams. The newborn god dodged the Soul Self and blasted at it with bursts of thunder and lightning. But Ignis dodged and came at him again, beams of flame shooting from the phoenix' eyes.

"That's new," commented Claire, gaping.

A massive burst of thunder sent the phoenix reeling, though, and the flames went out, the remaining energy of the soul self retreating into Ignis body.

"I've been practicing," he said groggily. "Give me a minute and I'll be able to fight him again."

Before anyone in the car could move, Superboy had blasted across the sky, wind and rain now soaking the battlefield, and smashed his fist into Williams' face. The power mad detective arced backwards, a cloud that carried him through the air forming beneath is his feet. He blasted at Kevin with bolts of lightning that looked like they'd kill a man on contact. Kevin just blocked them with his massive triceps and kept on flying—then he retaliated with heat vision that seared the armor on Williams chest.

The two began battling back and forth across the sky, trading blows—but with Superboy on the receiving end more often than not.

The rest of the Titans bailed from the car and began joining the fight; Claire hid on rooftops and began blasting with her proton cannon, taking shots and then taking cover wherever she could find it. Ignis blasted with fire, but even magic fire did little damage in the downpour.

Williams blocked an uppercut from Superboy and smashed him into a water tower; but heat vision lanced out from the wreckage of the tower before Superboy did, catching Williams off guard and giving Superboy a split second to blast through the wind and rain and smash his elbow into Williams face.

Soon a stalemate of sorts developed, and all the Titans were able to get within earshot of Kevin and the detective.

"This is crazy," Superboy said, breathing heavily and trying not to breath in the rain. "You have all this power, but now what? You're a killer. You've betrayed what you stand for. You can't be a cop anymore. You've become a monster."

"This wasn't my fault," Williams growled. "I loved my father—I would have died for him. But that idiot Suresh forced my hand."

"What do you mean?"

"I learned about his desire, his plans to kill my dad. He wanted to rob me—rob me of my inheritance, rob me of the power that was supposed to go to me. So you see, this is really all his fault. He killed Thunder and Lightning. Not me. I merely became Suresh's trigger man. Because this—" He pointed at his own body, his transformed state—"This is all rightfully mine."

"It was rightfully your father's and your uncle's," chimed in a new voice—Robin's voice. "Suresh is a neurotic dingbat. He couldn't hurt anyone, even when he wanted to."

"That's not true!" Williams barked, blasting at the Girl Wonder from his cloud. She dived out of the way, but slipped in the rain and slid into an AC unit. She clearly still needed time to recover from her injuries.

"I did what I did to prevent gods from being murdered by an ant."

But at this point, Williams no longer seemed sure of his own words. His conviction was stolen, which was exactly what Robin and Superboy were going for, though they had both formed their plans independently.

Rain and lighting crackled around them, but suddenly the wind stopped. All the Titans looked up, and slowly, Williams did too.

The clouds, twisted lighting crackling between them in the shape of a great, terrible face. Raiden, god of thunder, looking down at the creation his offspring had wrought.

"You're the one who murdered my sons," the heavens said.

"No, grandfather, it is me, Walter Williams! I am your grandson!" the detective shouted at the sky. Clouds, crackling with lighting, took the shape of a hand and reached down, rain and wind pouring out of them.

"I did not create you, filth," Raiden bellowed. "I regret siring sons with a human woman, but to murder them is to insult me. Now you will know what true power is."

And then the cloud descended, surrounding Williams and drawing from him one last terrible cry before it retreated into the heavens. And as it did, the clouds began to part, the storm ending.

"Holy spiff on a spiff sandwich with spiff on top," Claire muttered, staring vacantly at the sky. "With a side helping of spiff."

* * *

_The charges of murder against Obi Suresh were dropped, the evidence against him revealed as forgeries; and because he never took any steps to enact his murderous plans, the police couldn't even pin conspiracy on him. However, he was judged dangerous and committed to an asylum by the state of California, where he remains to this day._

_Detective Walter Williams was never seen or heard from again. _


End file.
